My Midwife Salaries
Salary information should be open access, so here’s mine. All the asterisks, caveats, particulars, and key information I can think of are outlined below. I’m also including a blank version of the graphic below others can add in their particulars, if y’all feel so inclined!
I have only ever worked in federally qualified health centers (FQHC) and community hospitals. These salaries reflect two different job locations, with the switch from #1 to #2 in year 4.
These salaries reflect my time as a 1.0 (100%) clinical midwife with mixes of outpatient and inpatient and inpatient time.
My work experience as a new midwife graduate was: three years in non-profit (non-clinical), six months as an RN in an abortion clinic. That was it. My goals for salary at the time were to make more than I did in non-profit, so anything above $62k (semi-standard non-profit salary in DC) was good with me.
My first job is where I completed my final midwifery school rotation, which for my midwifery program was called “integration.” So I had been at that clinical site for three months and was known to the facility at the time of hire.
$86k is a pretty standard starting salary for a midwife grad in Chicago, IL in the public sector.
I accepted my first job and that salary while my post-grad application to the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) was pending. I found out after I’d signed my contract that I was granted $50k for loan repayment in exchange for staying at that site for two years.
I chose not to apply for another round for NHSC funding after the second year because I was struggling at that job and wanted the freedom to leave if another position opened up. I have not had NHSC funding beyond those first two years for that same reason: I always wanted the freedom to leave.
I cannot remember if there had been cost-of-living increases during any year of my employment - it’s equally possible that there were as there weren’t, honestly. I can only remember two years where I’m sure there was a COLA, and a lot of years where there were emails that neither a COLA nor any form of an increase was not possible. I no longer have access to my work emails so I cannot verify those particulars.
COLAs matter. 1%-3% of either a raise or a COLA could make a huge difference in my monthly student loan payments. So my forgetting COLAs or small raises is not an indication that that money didn’t matter to me.
At that first job, my coworker and I had a conversation about how crappy our salaries were, and we both submitted requests for salary increases. I asked for a $10k increase, gave all the reasons why I thought I deserved it, and to my absolute shock, I received what I’d requested.
The job was still terrible (midwives being driven out of the hospital wasn’t the half of it), so I applied to another clinic system in a nearby neighborhood, this one an academic institution but still an FQHC. I was told there the salary was based on a strict algorithm, and there were no options for negotiation. So I took the lateral salary move.
Once I became an employee of a public university, all of my salaries were public knowledge. I believe this is the case for any public institution in any state. So if you’d like to know what clinicians make in your area, looking up their public salary information is a good start.
In my sixth year, the midwives organized for a practice-wide salary negotiation. We looked at what our fellow NPs made within our system, what comparable midwives in the city were making, and the fact that no raises or life adjustments had been made for years. My salary was adjusted based on the HR department’s assessment of those data. Every midwife in our service still makes less than other Advanced Practice Clinician within our same clinic and hospital system.
My salaries have always included health insurance, some amount of continuing medical education money and days off, a decent amount of but limited vacation and sick time.
The midwifery job at the academic institution came with student clinical teaching responsibilities, expected as part of regular work hours and with no dedicated time to process, debrief, complete student paperwork, etc. There was time given for limited invitations within the institution for didactic teaching.
My salaries have never included administrative time, time for writing and publishing papers, or time for presenting at conferences. It’s fair to say I averaged around 60 hours per week throughout those nine years.
Most nurses at that academic hospital make more than the most experienced midwives in the practice. For a million reasons, the most important of which is that the nurses are unionized.
My “salary” now as a midwife-turned-PhD student is $26,000. And it’s worth everything to me.
