Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on September 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am | No Comments »
As every direct care worker advocate knows, personal and home care aides earn far too little for the important work they do. And now an updated version of PHI’s State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides (PDF) gives advocates a valuable tool, proving that real wages are actually getting worse.
The chart book analyzes data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, adjusting last year’s wages for inflation to see how their earning power compares to average wages in 1999.
Nationwide, these inflation-adjusted rates, which the chartbook calls “real wages,” have decreased by 3 percent over the past nine years, dropping from $7.50 an hour to just $7.31. Real wages increased in more than half the states during that period, but not enough to make up for their decline in the other 21.
Median wages in 2008 ranged from $7.05 an hour in Texas to $12.55 in Alaska in 2008, or real wages of $5.61 to $9.90. “Wages for personal and home care aides are so low,” says PHI Director of Policy Research Dorie Seavey, “that about 20 percent of these workers received a raise on July 24 when the minimum wage increased to $7.25/hour.”
The chartbook also compares wages to federal poverty level wages for a one-person household.
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on August 7th, 2009 at 10:54 am | No Comments »
“Although Connecticut has expanded programming for services to meet the needs of older adults, persons with disabilities and persons with chronic health needs, we are losing the necessary labor force to properly provide these services,” says When No One Cares: Why We Need to Save Connecticut’s Direct Care Workforce. (PDF) The eight-page white paper outlines the state’s fast-growing need for direct care givers – particularly home care workers.
Connecticut’s “care gap” will be one of the more pronounced in the nation, with its population of elders is expected to increase by 69 percent by 2030, while the population that has traditionally supplied the great majority of direct care workers – women aged 25 to 44 – decreases by 10 percent. What’s more, home care, which is becoming more common as the long-term care system is “rebalanced,” requires more direct care workers than residential care, making it all the more urgent that the state find ways to attract and retain workers.
The paper organizes the roadblocks to building a stable and sufficient direct care workforce into three categories – recruitment, retention and reimbursement – and offers policy and practice solutions for each.
Continue reading »
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on June 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am | No Comments »
A full set of DCA Direct Care Fact Sheets, one for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, is now available in the Resources section of our website.
The one-page sheets were created as a resource for direct care worker advocates and their allies, legislators, policymakers, members of the media, and others interested in direct care issues. They include key facts such as:
- The number of home health aides, nursing assistants, and personal and home care aides in the state in 2006 and the projected numbers of each in 2016
- The average hourly wage for the state’s direct care workers
- What percentage of direct care workers in that state or region are without health insurance
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
As every direct care worker advocate knows, personal and home care aides earn far too little for the important work they do. And now an updated version of PHI’s State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides (PDF) gives advocates a valuable tool, proving that real wages are actually getting worse.
