U.S. Travel Nurses Are Being Offered as Much as $8,000 a Week
- Demand for travel nurses soars and it’s set to keep growing
- Hospitals also have surgery backlog, problems retaining staff
Nurses care for a Covid-19 patient inside an intensive care unit in Sonora, California.
Photographer: Nic Coury/AFP/Getty Images
With the economy reopening and labor scarce, all kinds of U.S. workers have been getting pay raises. Some of the biggest are going to a group that’s on the frontline of the fight against Covid-19: travel nurses.
There are about 30,000 open positions for travel nurses nationwide, according to data from SimpliFi, a health-care staffing firm. That’s up some 30% from last winter’s peak, and still climbing. Salaries have jumped too, with rates as high as $8,000 a week advertised for a three-month assignment.
Demand for nurses has spiked multiple times during the 18 months of the pandemic, reaching new highs with the current spread of the delta variant. Meanwhile, the strain of dealing with the outbreak has led many nurses to quit the profession, and hospitals and other health-care providers are struggling to fill permanent positions –- leaving them more dependent on temporary employees.