Pay rate in Los Angeles

SparklyGirl · Aug 11, 2007

I'm surprised LA is so low.

The hospitals here in the bay area (east bay) start new grads at $45/hour.

Sheri257 · Aug 11, 2007

I think the OP demonstrates why the pay rates in LA and Orange County are relatively low compared with the cost of living. It boils down to supply and demand ...

Afterall ... where do nurses want to live when they first move to California? Like the OP, they want to live on the coast. And, because of the ratio law ... thousands of nurses have moved here in the last couple of years, flooding the coastal markets.

So that's how you get a situation with relatively low pay compared with the higher cost of living on the coast. The hospitals don't always have to pay higher wages because there's already a pretty good supply of nurses. And, if there isn't a great supply because the pay sucks well ... there's always more nurses moving into the area who want those jobs. So the hospitals can still get by with lower pay.

Meanwhile, the migrant nurses (along with everybody else) are driving up greater demand for housing, etc. and, that's how the cost of living stays high even with relatively stagnant wages ...

In southern California, you could drive a couple of hours out to the desert, make the same money and pay a lot of less for a house but, nobody wants to live in the desert when they first move here. The coast is where they want to be. So that's how you end up with lower wages and a higher cost of living.

As far as the Bay Area ... yeah ... wages are higher but, instead of having to spend $500K for a house in LA or Orange County ... you're probably looking at $650-750K for a house in the Bay Area so ... the higher pay check doesn't go very far there.

But this is why Sacramento nurses are doing relatively better for the same reason. Just about everybody from out of state wants to move to San Fran ... places like Sacramento typically aren't their first choice when they move here. But with the cheaper housing prices and relatively higher wages in comparison, you can do better there financially because nurses haven't flooded those markets (at least not yet).