December 23, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Annual wages of nurses, doctors, and other health care workers

In 1998, the average annual wage of workers in the most common health care occupations ranged from $18,970 for pharmacy technicians and aides to $102,020 for physicians and surgeons.

[Chart data—TXT]

After doctors, the next highest paid among the most common occupations in the health field were pharmacists at $60,090 per year, dental hygienists at $46,570, and registered nurses at $43,070. The next lowest paid after pharmacy technicians and aides were emergency medical technicians at $22,360, medical technicians at $27,840, and licensed practical nurses at $28,040.

Among all of the health care occupations, registered nurses had the highest level of employment—over 2 million. The next occupations in terms of size were licensed practical nurses, with employment of about 700,000, and physicians and surgeons, with employment of nearly 500,000.

These data are a product of the Occupational Employment Statistics program. Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours. Find out more in Occupational Employment and Wages, 1998, news release USDL 99-364. Occupations in the chart had the highest levels of employment in 1998 of all health care