Heh. When we had our fire last year and lived in temp housing a few months, the place next to ours had a young husband and wife, with the wife a radiology tech, IIRC. She was high enough up the training scale to be doing contract work through an agency. They moved every year or two according to job availability. The guy worked at relatively low pay construction and rode off-road motorcycles, which is what he enjoys, while the wife worked at a local hospital at a rate that probably pushed 100K a year, but that also included that temp housing (2 bedroom full furnished and equipped apartment, with maid service) and some other bennies. I know for a fact that the housing goes for at least $1400 a month (but that includes local telephone bill, utilities, heat, even the detergent for the dishwasher and the washing machine. It's rough, though: you have to share the washing machine and dryer with the apartment next door).
It pays OK. To start.
Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore
Your experience is that most nurses are LPNs? Do you live in a nursing home?
I have always worked in a hospital setting (been a RN since 1992). While our LPNs are grandfathered, they don't seem to be hiring any more. We have two of them on my unit. Of course, we also have about 34 others who are all RNs.
As for educational preparation, I have an associates degree in nursing (ADN). Maybe half of my peers at work have the same. I earned it in two years. BSNs generally spend the first two years leaning liberal arts stuff, then start with the clinical nursing curriculum during their third year, completing it all in their fourth year.
Irregardless of how one earns a degree in nursing, we all take the same national exam. These days it's all computerized. There are not different scores acceptable for different states. You either pass the NCLEX or you don't. The days of different scores required in different states ended before I became a nurse. My mother remembers those days though... but then again she's 80 and remembers when Wyatt Earp died.
Once you pass, you can apply for licensure to individual states. One of the Dakotas requires a BSN to go along with the NCLEX but as far as I know that's the only one. Several states belong to the Nursing Compact, where a license from one can be used in any of the others (similar to a NY driver's license being acceptable to drive in Connecticut). Most of the states require their own license for practice. If you move from another state then it's just a formality to get that state's license (requiring 2-3 weeks of wating and a check). Generally speaking, a license from any one state will qualify you for a license in any other state.
They pay us the same no matter how we were prepared for the NCLEX. I've heard of places that might pay 25 cents per hour more for a BSN but I've never worked in one. Work experience (as a RN) has much more influence on what rate you're paid. I'm making roughly double what I did when I first graduated now.
As for demand.... man, it's a seller's market these days, and the nurses are what's selling. 3-10 thousand dollar sign-on bonuses are the rule in my neck of the woods. We don't grow on trees any more, though the jobs sure do.
That hourly rate, even *IF* it is fulltime, sounds so much more impressive than $35K a year. As I said in another post, if everyone discussed *dollars**per**year*, we could compare salaries/wages a lot more simply especially since a lot of jobs deliberately keep workers well under the forty limit to avoid having to provide benefits.
They seem to be all English speaking so the pay cannot be that bad. :)
Compare that with the Sears that is next door to our local BORG that I visited last night and spoke to an individual in the tool department.
Me : "Could you tell me the ACTUAL HP on this drill-press" Tool Manager: "Yes, it saiz richt there 2HP", as he points to sign reading '2HP maximum developed" Me: "No, not the maximum HP, but the true HP of the drill press" Tool Manager : "ajh jyes, 10 inches" Me: "Thanks"
I do not know why I keep going to Sears.......
I am sure the pay scale corresponds between the two as well.
I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference. There's not a lot of effort involved in converting hourly wages to annual (multiply by 2080 for a full week every week), but, as you note, there may not be much point. I don't know how many hours Marvin worked or works, but it wasn't full time, nor did he wish to work full time. Setting him up as earning 35K per year would have been a lie. It is far easier for most hourly wage jobs to provide the hourly rate than it is to extrapolate because of the variable hours. I've got another friend who makes about $16 an hour, but almost never drags down less than 50K a year. He puts the time in, does the work, and makes pretty decent money. How do I specifiy his salary? Well, I say he makes 16 bucks an hour, except when he's making 24.
At the start of the year, neither he nor his boss has any idea of how many time and a half hours he'll get, so specifying his earnings at 55K is not correct. He may only make 45, but is more likely to tap 60, sometimes a touch more.
The only time a company has to keep workers under xx hours to avoid providing benefits is when they provide benefits for those working a full week (which the company may designate as 35, 37-1/2 or 40 hours a week). If no one is paid benefits, there is no need to worry about hours. Admittedly, this tends to be the case in small companies. I've seen a lot of it with small contractors and builders. An extra buck or two an hour is supposed to make up for the lack of benefits.
It doesn't work if you check out health care costs today, which have reached thelevel of criminal (and not all of it is the fault of the insurance companies by any stretch).
Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore
Of course they did...it would be impossible to state otherwise, on the other hand the other half of the doctors out there graduated in the top half of their classes.
Your claim was that the employees of HD/Lowes earned minimum wage, which is virtually Always expressed in dollars per hour.
Now that you've been shown to have your head up your ass and generally have no idea what you're talking about, you're trying to nuance your claim by saying it's no longer an issue of minimum wage, but a comparison to upper management (which is a completely specious argument, and you Know it).
My son, a petroleum engineer, worked 12 hours a day for 29 straight days while on an oil rig in the gulf. At the end, I think he would have been happy to work for Lowe's
Check with one of the stores, David. I'm not sure that the stock clerks even work for the store. The last time I checked (years ago, at one of my local HD) they contracted with an inventory company to stock the shelves.
Many of the large retail stores in my area have gone this route. Their employees no longer do stocking.
Good luck.
Have a nice week...
Trent
What do you call a smart blonde? A golden retriever.
I always thought it was funny that for all the people who complain about how little Walmart pays, Walmart always has a long line of people who are dying to work there.
Walmart doesn't pretend to pay big bucks. Why pretend that they do?
Huh? I see no pretense anywhere about Walmart paying big bucks. Unless things have changed, the Bedford, VA store, where some people I know work, start everyone at $5.30 an hour. I think that's just to be able to say they're paying above minimum wage. I don't know if that's chain policy, but it seems likely.
That long line of people is essential, as the turnover is enormous. But I've heard it's a pretty good place for retirees who need a few extra bucks to work. It gets them out and involved and brings in some money to supplement SS.
Charlie Self "It is not strange... to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore
Up here, the auto insurers continue to cry the blues and raise rates by leaps and bounds. A few weeks ago however, the newspapers announced that the insurance companies' profits were up over *800%* /in/ /one/ /year/. They are among the biggest, most obscene bandits in our economy.
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