This time of year always bring a new batch of PA and NP salary survey information. I like to review the various surveys to compare if they match up with the trends I observe. Sometimes they do, and sometime they don’t .
As always, a few words of caution about salary surveys. First, they keep in mind the participants are self-selected which may skew the results. In my experience those doing well are more eager to fill out salary surveys while those experiencing less favorable compensation tend not to want to talk as much.
In a volatile or rapidly changing employment landscape a salary survey can often lag behind current trends. This has been especially true for PA and NP jobs over the last previous years, however, this past year has seen some increasing stabilization which make recent surveys more reliable.
Here is a quick summary of the most recent salary survey from Clinical Advisor along with my comments:
For an NP in family practice the yearly pay averages in the mid 80K range Womens health and pediatric NPs come in about 10K lower. Specialties, such as geriatrics or heme/onc will bring in a yearly salary in the 90K bracket.
My take: This is not a surprise to any of us in the recruiting biz. For those certified in womens health and peds wages and jobs have been in decline for years. What this survey doesn’t say is how the respondents for these categories are certified. An FNP working in these areas will earn more than those certified as peds or WH.
PAs earn about 10K more a year than NPs. The exception is in family practice where they come out only slightly ahead of NPs in pay.
My take: The other categories listed are specialty practice areas. No surprise they earn more. Specialty practices bring in more revenue so it logically follows that they will pay more too. PAs also still dominate in specialty practices. They tend to be more open to specializing than NPs although that is beginning to change too.
The survey also compares experience. In both categories experience brings more pay but for PAs the increase continues over their careers while the earnings of NPs level off after 5 years.
If you want to check out the entire survey, which includes further breakdowns by geographic region, it can be found here.