Salary in the US vs salary in Sweden

Nurses General Nursing

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Hi!

I am curius. I´m a nurse in Sweden, been working for one year. My salary is around $35.000/year. Nurses in Sweden who has been working for 30 years make around $43.000/year. That´s pretty bad, I think. So I´m wondering, how much is your salary in the US?

/underpaid nurse

Specializes in Critical Care, Progressive Care.
That´s why a lot of nurses do go to Norway to work. Nurses there are MUCH better paid.

That is sad. I have always had the impression that nursing is a highly regarded profession in Sweden requiring a longer and more rigorous course of training than most other countries. You ought to make more! Are nurses in Sweden represented by a trade union?

Even with the generous social benefits traditionally provided by the government in Sweden it strikes me that it would be hard to live there with much comfort, let alone fun, on that salary. When I last visited Sweden I found the price of food, housing, etc to be much higher than in the US.

Starting salary for an RN at most hospitals in San Francisco is about $85,000 per year with differentials for nights and weekends - and over course substantially more pay for hours worked over 40 per week. It is, however, very expensive to live here (even compared to Sweden) - a modest ( and I mean modest) one bedroom apartment rents for a minimum of $1800 per month.

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Specializes in Spinal Cord injuries, Emergency+EMS.
That is sad. I have always had the impression that nursing is a highly regarded profession in Sweden requiring a longer and more rigorous course of training than most other countries. You ought to make more! Are nurses in Sweden represented by a trade union?

perhaps nursing is still stuck as a 'vocation' ...

in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s there were sevral occisionswhere nursing salaries and /or terms and conditions were given very large jumps in short periods of time including at one point a 25% pay rise ... but in a background of nurses living like 'normal people' rather than 'living in' and leaving onmarrying...

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Specializes in Critical Care, Progressive Care.
perhaps nursing is still stuck as a 'vocation'

Thanks Zippy for your informative posts about nursing pay scales in the UK. Is a bachelors degree required for nurses in the UK? I have heard from nurses that have worked in the both the US and UK systems that nurses (in general) have do more with greater autonomy in the UK than the US.

I think you are correct in your observation that pay increases happened when nurses began to need to provide for themselves (rather than living at home or with their husbands). It strikes me that low salaries in nursing are tied to the historically low status of women as wage earners.

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Specializes in Orthopedics/Med-Surg, LDRP.

It depends on a lot. First I'm sure that there is a conversion of money to yours and ours unless you were posting salaries in USDs. It also depends on which areas of the US you live in and in what specialty you go in. My first year of nursing I made just over $60,000 UDS before taxes. After taxes/benefits/retirement plan, etc It was probably about $50,000.

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St. Louis, Missouri nurses with 13 years experience make about $45,000/yr, get 2 weeks paid time off and contribute about half the cost of their family health insurance. sad sad sad.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Progressive Care.
St. Louis, Missouri nurses with 13 years experience make about $45,000/yr, get 2 weeks paid time off and contribute about half the cost of their family health insurance. sad sad sad.

Ouch! Even with pretty low cost of living it must be pretty hard to have a family on that income. Why so low? Is there a glut of nurses in St Louis right now?

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