This Is the Lowest Paying Job in America’s Hospitals

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Lowest Paying Job in America’s Hospitals

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The medical profession has been changed radically by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many nurses, overburdened by caring for the sick, have left the profession. The shortage could last for years. A number of doctors have been “burned out” by extreme caseloads and caring for the sick and dying. The effect has been particularly harsh for emergency room and critical care physicians.

Other doctors have been badly damaged financially, which has pushed thousands of them out of the profession. Doctors who perform procedures may not have seen patients for months due to the seriousness of the virus. Some doctor’s offices were closed for weeks or months, undermining savings.

One thing has not changed. Doctors are among the best-paid people in America. Doctors with specialties often show up on federal government data on the highest-paid Americans. Usually, their annual compensation runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars. For some specialties, like cosmetic surgery, the number can be much higher.

If doctors are the highest-paid people in almost every hospital, who are the lowest paid? Health Affairs and Medscape recently released a list of hospital employees by pay. Data was pulled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The results were covered by Becker’s Hospital Review.
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As might be expected, the highest-paid employees in hospitals are chief executive officers. They make $633,520 per annum. CEOs at large hospitals make an average of $1,100,320.

Out of the 55 jobs covered by the report, janitors and cleaners made $29,972. They were barely edged out by orderlies, who make an average of $29,990

This is the average pay for the 20 lowest paying jobs at American hospitals:

  • Janitors and cleaners: $29,972
  • Orderlies: $29,990
  • Nursing assistants: $30,310
  • Cooks: $30,451
  • Security guards: $31,470
  • Pharmacy technicians: $36,740
  • Emergency medical technicians, paramedics: $36,930
  • Phlebotomists: $37,380
  • Medical records and health information technicians: $45,240
  • Surgical technologists: $48,530
  • Clinical laboratory technologists and technicians: $57,800
  • Healthcare social workers: $60,840
  • Dietitians: $61,650
  • Radiology techs: $61,980
  • Public relations specialists: $62,800
  • Registered nurses: $77,600
  • Nuclear medicine technologists: $78,760
  • Physical therapists: $95,620
  • Medical and health service managers: $119,450
  • Nurse practitioners: $120,680

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Click here to see in which state nurses make the most money.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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