The PayScale Index (US): Trends in Compensation

2012: Wages in the healthcare industry continued to climb upward in Q1 2012. Workers’ earnings grew 0.6 percent over the previous quarter to finish a full 1.4 percent above their previous peak in Q4 2008.

2007-2011: Healthcare incomes tracked the national trends closely through all of 2007 and most of 2008. Yet, in the second half of 2008, wages continued to rise, bucking the national trends. Entering 2009, when the market price for workers in the U.S. dropped sharply overall, healthcare pay stayed almost exactly where it was at the end of 2008.

This does not mean that healthcare industry wages were not affected by the recession. However, wages dropped, at most, a little more than 0.5 percent from their peak during this time, performing much better than nearly every other industry. They then stayed in a narrow range, increasing slightly in 2010 and finally rising above their Q4 2008 peak by the end of 2011.

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The healthcare and social assistance industry (62), as defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), includes the following: medical and dental offices, kidney dialysis centers, home health care services, hospitals, child care centers, homes for the elderly, emergency services. View the full definition on Census.gov.

The PayScale Index tracks quarterly changes in total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees in the United States. In addition to a national index, it includes separate indices for specific industries, metropolitan areas, job categories, and company sizes. The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

See full methodology for compensation trend reports.

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