93 percent of nurses are women — and the 7 percent who are men still make more money

Only about 7 percent of nurses in the United States are men, but that small minority does well financially: male nurses out-earn female nurses by an average of $5,148, a new study shows.

A team of French researchers looked at the salaries of American nurses, using two separate surveys. Both showed that male nurses out-earn female nurses, after controlling for other factors like education and type of job.

"Male RNs outearned female RNs across settings, specialties, and positions with no narrowing of the pay gap over time," the researchers write.

You can see that the pay gap persists across specialties in this other graph, which breaks down nurse salaries by type of work:

(JAMA)

The gap is biggest among nurse anesthesiologists, where men out-earn women by more than $17,000. Perhaps surprisingly, there is one field where women out-earn men in nursing: academia.

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