The principles which drive wages in a market economy are numerous. The initiatives that compel the earning in the nursing field can be primarily based on two concepts; people face trade-offs and government can positively affect the market.
The trade-offs in nursing are definite. There is very little opportunity or instance of wage increase. There is only a $3.87 per hour or 14% increase between median pay wages for nurses with one and twenty-one years in service (PayScale, 2009). The other side of that, however, is due to the shortage job security is stronger than ever, which can be imperative in an unsteady economy.
The second notion, that the government can still positively affect the market in a ‘free’ economy, can be seen in the steps the United States government, as well as governments of other developed nations, are struggling to improve the nursing shortage by offering federal incentives to enter the field. More could be done to rectify the situation. Nurses are employed in a broad range of venues and are "the largest group of health care workers in the United States, numbering over 2.6 million" (Wikipedia, 2009). Though working everywhere from attorney’s offices to insurance companies, the most critical factors impacting a nurse's wage are the number of years the professional has been working in the field, tenure at the employer, and, as in many fields, location. Location is the most influential.
Though the average salary remains around $30 an hour nationwide, the median between metropolitans can vary by as much as $10 an hour or $20,000 annually. In Atlanta, for example, the median hourly wage for a nursing professional is $29.42, up from $28.09 in the rest of the state of Georgia, according to PayScale (2009). The area in which the nurse is located will weigh on with how wages are calculated because factors like population, density, demographics, and proliferation and availability of health care affect the supply and demand of...