For the past several decades, the American economy has been defined by consistently widening wage gaps; Highly-educated and specially trained workers have seen their salaries steadily rise, while less-educated workers in lower-wage positions have seen their pay remain stagnant. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, disrupted that trend as lower-wage workers across many industries saw earnings climb faster than those of higher earners.

A new study from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (SPH) examines how this trend played out in the context of the healthcare industry—a field critical to pandemic response yet marked by longstanding pay inequities. Using data from more than 158,000 health care workers between 2015 and 2024, the research team tracked inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings across six job categories—from advanced practice providers like nurses and technicians, to less skilled health care aides and assistants—and analyzed pay trends by education, race and ethnicity, and gender.

The study, published in Health Affairs, found:

• Workers with only a high school diploma experienced the biggest percentage wage increase (13%), whereas those with college degrees saw little or no growth.
• Healthcare aides and assistants saw the largest wage growth (13.6%) while registered nurses’ and technicians’ pay (though higher overall) was nearly flat.
• Black and Hispanic workers earned less overall but had higher relative wage growth than white workers, and women’s pay rose faster than men’s—narrowing the gender wage gap among healthcare workers.

“The pandemic shook up the labor market in many ways that we are still coming to terms with,” said Janette Dill, SPH associate professor and lead author. “We saw this kind of ‘unexpected compression’ in other fields, but no one had looked closely at whether the same thing had occurred in the healthcare sector. Similar to the general labor market, we found that those in the lowest-earning occupations and lowest levels of education—especially aides and assistants, workers with less than a high school degree, Black workers, and women—had the most earnings growth following the pandemic.

“While these are hopeful signs, those gains remain fragile without sustained policy attention. Ensuring an adequate healthcare workforce—especially in frontline, direct-care occupations—requires ongoing investment in improving wages and overall job quality,” Dill said.