UPMC boosts nurse compensation to $52.17 an hour by 2027

By Kris B. Mamula / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

UPMC is boosting compensation for entry level registered nurses to $52.17 an hour by 2027, a 20% increase and nearly $9 more an hour than local competitors pay, the Downtown-based hospital and health insurance giant announced Monday.

New nurses with a bachelor’s degree will get $41.75 an hour and $40 an hour without a bachelor’s degree for an 18% increase. A sign-on bonus of $15,000 combined with a monthly loan repayment coverage of $20,000 over three years brings hourly wages for entry level nurses to $52.17 for bachelor’s level nurses and $50.42 for those without a bachelor’s degree.

The hourly wages only apply to bedside nurses working in urban hospitals, but all 23,000 registered UPMC nurses in the three states where it operates — Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland — will see the same percentage increases, said Maribeth McLaughlin, UPMC chief nurse executive.

“We look at the market every year to make sure our nurses have the best economic package and work environment,” she said Monday. “Everyone will see wage adjustments.”

A nurse with a bachelor’s degree in Pittsburgh earns an average $107,210 per year or about $51.54 per hour, according to Santa Monica, Calif.-based ZipRecruiter. Most nurses in the city earned between $69,900 and $119,400 a year, with top earners making around $165,524

UPMC’s announcement came within days of reaching a contract with 115 nurses at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital in Oakland, which will raise the minimum wage for bachelor’s degree level nurses 27.1% to $40.25 an hour over three years from $31.65, according to Chicago-based health care publication Becker’s Hospital Review. The nurses were represented by SEIU Healthcare of Pennsylvania. 

The UPMC pay hikes come as the nursing workforce expands to meet the needs of an aging population amid continuing nursing shortages. The number of registered nurses was expected to grow to 3.3 million from 3.1 million in 2022 for a 6% increase, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. At the same time, the total supply of registered nurses fell by more than 100,000 from 2020 to 2021 — the biggest drop in four decades, with most nurses under age 35 and employed by hospitals.

Ms. McLaughlin said the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the nursing workforce.

“UPMC is working hard, through its seven schools of nursing across the system, to build our pipeline, rebuilding the nursing workforce,” she said. “We took a hit during the pandemic, when lots of nurses retired, but we’ve been rebuilding and investing.”