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
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »