Nurse salaries on the rise in response to increased demand

Nurses are in demand and in short supply with salaries on the rise.

Hospitals are giving nurses raises worth thousands of dollars a year, the latest employer to feel the pinch of a tight labor market, according to The Wall Street Journal.

One of the country’s largest hospital chains, HCA Healthcare, increased nurse pay this year to handle heavy COVID pandemic caseloads and to keep up with competitors who are also trying to fill jobs and keep existing staff, The Journal reported.

According to the news outlet, other hospitals have said that they too plan to raise pay in order to compete with competitors’ offers. This month, a small Missouri hospital desperate for nurses increased nurse salaries by up to 5% after hospitals nearly 40 miles away increased wages.

“We were forced to,” Sarah Hanak, chief nursing officer at Citizens Memorial Hospital in Mo., told The Journal. “We absolutely have to stay competitive.”

Healthcare consultants Premier Inc. analyzed salaries of about 60,000 nurses for The Journal. They found that the average annual salary for registered nurses, excluding bonus pay such as overtime, grew about 4% so far this year to $81,376.

That compares to a 3.3% growth in average nurse wages for the entire year of 2020 and a 2.6% increase the year before the COVID pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, The Journal reported.

Nurses have played a vital role in the pandemic, caring for COVID patients who flooded emergency rooms and filled hospital beds, in addition to their regular patient care.

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