Real Wages Fall for Direct Care Workers

PHI Chartbook Shows National, State-by-State Data

Thanks to the steadily increasing demand for home care, the second fastest-growing occupation in the country is that of personal and home care aides (PHCAs). Yet PHCA wages - which were low to begin with - are failing to keep up with inflation nationwide.

State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides, 1999-2006, (pdf) a new PHI publication by Director of Policy Research Dorie Seavey, looks at the decline in inflation-adjusted wages for these crucial workers. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it charts the wages received by personal and home care aides in all 50 states and the nation over a seven-year period.


"Consumers want to receive their long-term care services at home, if at all possible, and all 50 states and the federal government are working to accommodate that wish," says PHI National Policy Director Steve Edelstein. "But it takes more workers to deliver one-on-one care in a client's home than to assist several people per shift in a nursing home.

"Between the aging of the baby boomers and the shifting of government funds from facility-based care to home and community-based care, we expect to need a million more direct-care workers by 2016 than we did in 2006," Edelstein adds. "We need to make sure these jobs can attract and support a stable, high-quality workforce. Unfortunately, just when we need to do more to build this critical workforce, what we find in too many states is that our investment in wages is uncompetitive and falling further and further behind."

Among the chartbook's key findings:

• Between 1999 and 2006, national median wages for PHCAs increased by an average of 2 percent a year, from $7.50 to $8.54. However, this increase was not enough to keep up with inflation. Real wages for these aides declined by 4 percent, to $7.17 in 1999 dollars.
• Over the same period, 18 states and the District of Columbia showed a decline in real median wages for PHCAs. In five of those states, real wages fell by 10 percent or more.
• In nearly 60 percent of states (29), average hourly wages for PHCAs were below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Line wage for full-time workers who live alone -- low enough to qualify for many state and federal assistance programs.