Salary for nurses in canada

Salary for nurses in canada Each province's union contract is a little different. The premiums are individual to the contract. This link will take you to a cross-country comparison of hours of work, wages and benefits so you can evaluate them: http://www.nursesunion.mb.ca/pdf%20f...(12-17-07).pdf

It's up-to-date to the end of 2007 and is very easy to navigate your way through. Here in Alberta, evening premium is $2.25, as is the weekend premium, and nights is $3.50. These will increase as of April 1, 2008. They're cumulative, so if you work nights on a weekend you get both premiums, or an extra $5.75 an hour.

Our income tax filing deadline is April 30 each year. The return itself is very convoluted and difficult to understand in places. Tax preparers spring up on every street corner in late January and hang around until the middle of May. The exemptions and deductions also differ from province to province, as does the taxation rate. I usually get back a couple of hundred dollars a year, but not enough to really get excited about.

Nurses make good money even after taxes, but it seems these days that two incomes are becoming almost a requirement for a decent standard of living. I work part-time, 70% full time equivalent and my take home pay is about $1550 biweekly. But bear in mind that I live in Alberta, we are the highest paid nurses in Canada and I'm at the top of the scale. If you take the information found in the cross-country comparison and the information I gave you in my first post then do some simple math, you should be able to figure out what the take home pay in the provinces you're considering would be. An average full time work year in most provinces is about 2000 hours worked.

2000 hours per year
1000 hours of night premium (for 50:50 day to night rotation)
300 hours of evening premium (for those 86 twelve hour day shifts)
605 hours of weekend premium (for working alternate weekends)
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Gross income times 35% for taxes and deductions

Gross income minus taxes and deductions divided by 26 gives you a biweekly amount.

It won't be totally accurate but a good estimate.

There are a lot of nursing vacancies across the country, but if you read any of the threads that revolve around Internationally Educated Nurses and immigration (now moved to the International Nursing Forum) you'll see that even though there are lots of jobs it isn't a walk in the park for nurses from outside Canada to be hired for them.

And don't forget in your financial analysis to look at cost of living in the provinces you're considering. People making VERY good money are living lives that don't seem to correlate to their level of income because of housing and utilities costs, for example. The amount of money one makes doesn't always reflect the amount of comfort one derives from it.