[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] As the shortage of nursing staff has worsened due to COVID-19, the value of nurses in the United States is soaring.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 29th (local time), some hospitals in the U.S. are offering signing bonuses worth tens of millions of won as hiring contract bonuses to nurses who sign long-term contracts.
For example, Monument Health Hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota, reportedly offers a $40,000 (approximately 46.55 million won) bonus, and Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia offers a $20,000 (approximately 23.27 million won) bonus.
According to Vivian Health, a healthcare staffing agency, the average weekly wage for traveling nurses who work for a certain period was $3,500 (approximately 4.07 million won) in December last year, which is 2.2 times the $1,600 from a year earlier.
After a period of slowdown in the spread of COVID-19, the weekly wages of traveling nurses showed signs of normalizing but rose again with the Delta variant, reaching $2,597 earlier this month.
This is due to the chronic nursing shortage in the U.S., which has been a problem for years, becoming even more severe due to COVID-19.
Last year, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimated that the shortage of nurses could reach about one million.
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