Report: One million more care workers needed by 2016
A million more direct-care workers will likely be needed by 2016 to meet the demand for services from Americans over age 65. Yet the vast majority of frontline workers earn wages below $9.85 per hour and nearly one in three lack health insurance coverage.
Those statistics were unveiled in a recent report by the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, known as PHI, a national nonprofit organization that tries to improve the lives of those who need home or residential care.
Personal care and home care aides are the people who dress, feed, toilet and perform other tasks for elderly and disabled people. Yet many earn poverty level wages, and those wages, adjusted for inflation, have actually declined since 1999, the report said.
PHI's State Chart Book on Wages for the period from 1999 through 2006 shows that:
* Across the United States, real wages dropped by 4 percent during the seven-year period, with 21 states showing a fall or no change.
The median wage nationally stood at $7.50 per hour in 1999 and rose to $8.54 in 2006, an increase of 14 percent. But the real median wage adjusted for inflation declined 4 percent to $7.17, the report said.
Wisconsin's nominal wage, however, increased 24 percent from $7.57 to $9.38. But its inflation-adjusted wage increased just 6 percent in those seven years, to $8.01, according to the PHI statistics.
* In 29 states, average hourly wages for personal and home care aides were below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Line for individuals in one-person households working full time, which is $9.40. Wisconsin was just slightly better at $9.42.
* In 2006, no state except Alaska reported wages for these aides above 250 percent of the federal poverty line for a single individual, which is $11.78. Texas was lowest at $6.51 per hour.
"Personal and home care aides are the second-fastest growing occupation in the country, yet wages have not kept up with inflation," said Dorie Seavey, director of research at PHI and author of the report.
Consequently, turnover is high, as workers seek living wage jobs, with turnover at 70 percent annually in nursing homes and 50 percent in home care, the report said.
The organization recommended that Congress extend federal wage and hour protection to all home care workers, encourage states to target payment policies and support state demonstrations that extend health care coverage to direct-care workers who provide publicity funded services.
