What does San Diego pay?

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Hello all.

I'm currently a travel nurse with 8 years of ICU experience. Lately I've started to get tired of the travel gig and I think I'd like to settle down. My last assignment was close to San Diego and I really fell in love with the city. I'm trying to decide if I can afford to live there but I'm having problems finding accurate numbers for pay.

Could somebody help me out and let me know how much I should expect to make in SD?

Thank you so much.

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Nobody has any input?

I've been searching all over but have yet to find anywhere that seems to have accurate pay estimates for nurses. I'm trying to compare a few different California cities.... Any information at all would be very helpful.

Thank you.

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Hello all, I originally posted this in the California board but didn't get any replies, so I figured I'd appeal to a wider audience.

I'm currently a travel nurse with 8 years of ICU experience. Lately I've started to get tired of the travel gig and I think I'd like to settle down. My last assignment was close to San Diego and I really fell in love with the city. I'm trying to decide if I can afford to live there but I'm having problems finding accurate numbers for pay. On the flip side, I'm also considering Sacramento due to it's location but am also having problems finding accurate pay numbers. Online they vary by 30k/year, which is kind of a big deal!

Could somebody help me out and let me know how much I should expect to make in SD or Sacramento?

Thank you so much.

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I work in psych in Sacramento and RNs start out at about $45-50 per hour full time with benefits. (DOE). Per diem would be more like $50+ per hour. If you have ICU experience, depending on which hospital you work at, the lower end would be $50/hr and up. Kaiser, Sutter, Dignity Health and UC Davis all have competitive rates. Good luck!

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Specializes in ER, Trauma, Med-Surg/Tele, LTC.

Here's the current union contracts for all the different UCs. The wage tables start on page 79. At least by looking at UC Davis' rates and UCSD's rates, you can get an idea of where the range might be for your number of years of experience.

Link: http://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/labor/bargaining-units/nx/docs/nx_2013-2017_00_complete-contract.pdf

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You guys are awesome! Thanks!

If anyone has any more info, I'm all ears.

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Specializes in L&D, infusion, urology.

You can find a lot of this stuff if you hunt around. For example, here's a job posting for a position through the San Francisco Department of Public Health, who also posts positions for San Francisco General Hospital: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/jobs/P103wl1.pdf I have seen that hospital jobs seem to pay about in line with this position. I applied for a position (RNI, as I am a new grad) in the ED for Kaiser South Sacramento, and the starting salary was $69.10/hour. Those are among the higher salaries I have seen, however, and the market is very competitive. Northern CA pays more than southern, in general. Have you ever spent any time in Sacramento? It's VERY different from San Diego. Each major city in CA is very unique from the others, really. I would suggest taking some time to explore each one you're considering, and see what feels good. Plus, there's always where you're able to find work! :)

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About mid/high 40s before differentials at UCSD. As stated somewhere above, you can look it up online. Sacramento is the complete polar opposite of San Diego. Sacramento is where you wanna go for large affordable homes. Sd, Socal in general is not as giving as we are taxed in sunshine and pathetic amounts of rain yearly. Housing is fairly expensive relative to the rest California, as are the other 2 meters la and sf.

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check glassdoor.com, you can reviews on a specific hospital and how much they pay

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Unfortunately glassdoor has incredibly inaccurate pay ranges.

Thanks for the advice though.

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Unfortunately glassdoor has incredibly inaccurate pay ranges.

Thanks for the advice though.

The pay ranges are actually pretty accurate. There's not a lot of information, but what's there on the bigger acute care hospitals look right. Everything else I see is registry and small sites I'm assuming.

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Well, that's my problem. There's not a lot of information. The scales are from $32/hr all the way up to 111K/year. I need to know where I will fall within that range, since that's a pretty big range. So far the union information has been the most fruitful since it breaks down pay by experience as well. Basically I'm looking for someone who works the area to give me some info.

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