I keep on reading that there is a shortage of nurses at all levels, from nursing aids to registered nurses, to nurse practitioners. A quick google shows tons of stories about how we already have big shortages, as do most countries, and those shortages are only expected to grow.
So then how come nursing aides make like $8-12 an hour in most places? There should be no shortage of money in the health care industry. Doctors get a big share, equipment gets a big share, hospital administration gets a big share, and yet they don’t have enough nurses and don’t seem interested in raising pay high enough to entice people into the profession. What gives here? The law of supply and demand suggests that nursing aide salaries should rise steeply given a labor shortage. Have hospitals and nursing homes just made a collective decision to just do without?
Actually, the law of supply and demand is pretty ironclad, but the rhetoric around it misleads us. there is a “shortage” of nursing aides willing to work for low pay. That does not mean there is a shortage of nursing aides or that the law of supply and demand has failed.
Where I am confused is how demand for more and more health care has raised prices of pretty much everything EXCEPT nursing aides. Techs make more, doctors make more, equipment makers make more, drug makers make more, everyone’s making out like bandits except the nursing aides. What’s keeping some of that health care profits bonanza from going to them? Couldn’t the hospitals and nursing homes just keep raising prices like they do when they need to pay for all this other stuff? Why get stingy about that ONE job?
The study identified 56,340 male nursing assistants to 646,142 women.
The study identified 375,416 white nursing assistants, 271,582 black, and 55,484 other.
That’s a far larger proportion of black nursing assistants than one would extrapolate from the overall population.
People are looking for market reasons for this lack of pay, but I believe discrimination is the key factor.
Whenever you hear media reports of a “shortage” of workers, what it really means is that there’s a shortage of people who are willing to work for meager wages and the industry involved is pushing for more immigrants to come in and depress wages further.
It all boils down to what this society and the people within it value the most. Human service jobs have traditionally been society’s lowest paying jobs; i.e., teachers, social workers, etc. On the other hand, if you can dribble and shoot or throw a sixty yard pass accurately, you will make untold millions of dollars because that is what people are willing to spend to see you do it.
As someone who has been in education since she has graduated from college, I can say that I’ve seen many parents who buy their kids gym shoes that cost hundreds of dollars but who will come to PTA meetings and rant about paying another paltry one hundred dollars a year in property taxes for their children’s schools.
Are doctors really making all that much more? My uninformed impression was that it was the corporations who were making more (insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc.), but that individuals who work in health care at the serving-the-patient level weren’t seeing their pay go up all that much.
It’s not that all pro ball players make “untold millions,” it’s the ceiling is so high. That’s what the most famous ones make, so that’s what everyone thinks of when they think of how much money professional athletes make.
And it’s not just about whom we value the most; it’s about who does the valuing. To make huge amounts of money, you have to be valued at least a little by huge numbers of people, or you have to be valued quite a bit by someone with the ability to pay you. The people who benefit most directly from what a teacher, social worker, or nursing aide does usually aren’t the ones determining their pay level.
There is also an economic of numbers at play. While there may be a “shortage” of nurses, the nursing industry is one of the largest by sheer numbers. There are more than 3 million nurses in the US, and a good size hosp can employ hundreds. A dollar or 2 raise in wage could add millions to the yearly payroll of a hosp. Not an easy thing to get past the bean counters.
I’m not saying that’s a good enough reason for paying such an important job such sad wages; but I’m sure there are those who do feel that way.
I’ve never felt that comparison is fair. A teacher or a doctor or social worker or a restaurant cook all do something for just a few people. A doctor might see 30 patients a day, a social worker might just have a handful of cases at any given time. But someone that plays football or is in movies or makes music can, in the same amount of time, provide that service to millions of people. If people in any of those categories could only have a dozen spectators a day, I think it’s fair to say their compensation would come down to more realistic numbers.
IOW, it’s not that we value a quarterback over a doctor, it’s just that you pay $100 to see a doctor for 20 minutes all by yourself, but millions and millions of people pay a hundred dollars to see a quarterback all at the same time.
So the law of supply and demand is ironclad, but what you expect to happen isn’t happening? That suggests to me that “supply and demand” is merely a part of a more complex system of human actors and culture and that there is nothing “ironclad” about it.
The opportunity costs of becoming a nursing aide are much lower than they are for nurses or doctors or technicians. Therefore the supply of possible candidates is much larger, and the cost of their labor is much lower.
Correct - what we actually value - not what we think other people should value, what we actually value enough to spend our money on.
Because many other “improvements to service” are driven by legal obligations.
As long as they are paid minimum wage, there is no legal obligation.
In my experience CNA/PCA types actually are paid a bit better in acute care hospitals vs. nursing home type environments.
Shortage of Registered Nurses is ore a function of lack of school output making it a highly competitive market for employers to acquire and retain good nurses. Its often the case that becoming a teacher in a nursing school is a significant cut in pay and major loss of work life flexibility compared to working the floor.
No, what the nursing aide situation tells me is that there is no shortage. There are exactly as many nursing aides as you would expect given what employers are willing to pay. The “shortage” is employers whining because they don’t want to pay more.
And you’ve just succinctly pointed out an intrinsic flaw in the so called “free market” system that so many laud as the only true measure of right and wrong.
Why should it be that an athlete who has a many times larger “audience” should get a many times larger paycheck? Why shouldn’t it be that the “audience” of the athlete gets a many times smaller bill?
When you allow decisions based on what the public is willing to spend, and that public routinely proves that it is incapable of making decisions in it’s own best interest you end up with an economy that pays nurses $8/hr.
My niece’s husband is a CNA, and has been for several years. He loves what he does, and he has a heart for caring for other people (particularly senior citizens), but he tells me that the low pay, along with what are often unpleasant working conditions, make it a job with a lot of turnover.
The job entails a lot of cleaning up the results of bodily functions, and a lot of having to pick up and move the patients, as well as being the low person on the care ladder (lots of getting ordered around by impatient nurses and other professionals, and a lack of respect from them). He sees a lot of people who wind up feeling, “I don’t get paid enough to put up with this,” and leave.
That is generally what is meant whenever one speaks about “shortages” in the job market. And the reason pay isn’t raising is that “supply and demand” is only one factor among many for setting salaries.
The free market has nothing to do with right or wrong, and anyone who says it does is making a fundamental mistake.
The free market, and prices set by the free market, is information. It is communicating, with utterly indifferent accuracy, what people are willing to pay for something they want, compared with everything else they want. Morality has nothing to do with it.
It’s like blaming a seismograph for reporting the magnitude of an earthquake, because earthquakes kill people.
Maybe you think nursing assistants should make $20 an hour. Great - buy a nursing home and offer jobs at that rate. You will have no shortage of applicants. If you can make a go of it, good for you, and good for the NAs. You will be competing with other nursing homes who pay their NAs $10, and to that extent their operating cost will be lower. If you can find enough patients who are willing to pay more, you will succeed. If patients complain about the high cost of putting Grandma into your nursing home, then we will see.