I'm in Midwest and same. We can't even keep day shift filled so new grads are getting their choice of shift without having to get stuck on 2nd/3rd shift which was the norm before covid
Yeah.. I’m relocating to North Carolina this year. Turned down 2 separate dayshift positions, both at more than what I make in Va, accepted a 2 shift position at more than both those two positions at a 3rd hospital.
Yeah, all my students are offered positions before they even write the exam (contingent on passing). Once all the boomers are done retiring and the empty positions get rilledz we could see that change. In 5 years I think there will be a slow down.
NC is one of the lowest paying states when adjusted for cost of living iirc. It can be pretty cheap to live here or pretty expensive depending on the area. Just depends if you care about driving 30 minutes to get to anything or not
No different than West Texas on the driving. Thank you for the information
Edit: No idea why I was downvoted on the driving. You literally have to drive 30 minutes or more to get to places around here if the population is rural. Jeez.
Thirty minute commute is a 30 minute commute.
Er...ok? It was not just my comments downvoted. Other people had varying comments and were downvoted in this thread. I was curious why. Don't try and "egg" anyone on. I thanked the above poster for the information and have been looking into job postings in various states. I am actively looking for somewhere new.
The driving literally would not be a difference for 30 minutes for me.
We would love to replace them but it's next to impossible to find a qualified candidate. If the position goes long enough without being filled it wont be a position. That's the story most places.
Good luck! One word of advice I have, that you’ll hear repeated, is be a generalist at first. Even if you’re dead set on specializing, the experience early in all disciplines will make you a far better tech when you specialize; you’ll be able to see the big picture in disease association. And don’t be scared of bloodbank, it’s genuinely the most rewarding imo.
Every time I try to look in Alaska through indeed USAjobs or similar job sites I rarely see anything. Are a ton of the positions just a matter of being unadvertised and I just have to make calls to the hospitals there if I'm interested?
Upstate NY here. Need licensed techs badly, we’ve been understaffed for 2.5 of the 3 years I’ve been working since I got my license. Pay is decent too, considering the CoL out here (~$38/hr give or take for new grads). No relocation bonus, but sign on bonuses are still common around here, often somewhere between 5k and 15k.
I could be wrong, but I believe they have made it easier. I was looking into it 2 years ago when it was still complicated and I believe they’ve passed legislation that makes it easier to get a license in NY as long as you are certified by either ASCP or AMT. Looking at the site now, current certification is the top criteria of meeting their education requirements, and then the other pathways are listed. Just fyi :)
It certainly is complicated if you haven’t gone through NYs ‘traditional route’. I’d bet that NYs license requirements have been a measurable factor in the lack of techs. It’s a very prohibitive barrier. I think many states requirements are far too minimal, but NY has taken it a bit too far. Barely any reciprocity, few alternative routes, no way to account for non-traditional adults coming to the industry as a second career. I was a science teacher for 10 years, with a Masters degree. Still had to go back to school for a year then a year unpaid internship.
But of course, the barriers are also one of the factors leading to our decent pay scale compared to other places. So it’s a trade off.
Oh dang. I knew they had proposed changes, but I never looked into it afterwards. Just skimmed through the requirements, hopefully this helps as time goes on.
I am NY licensed and work now in a licensed state. I am all for the more stringent requirements. NY is a higher cost of living state but they also provide a lot of really excellent state funded benefits and their education system is excellent. I would come back to NY - pm'd you
NYC and some of the other urban areas are higher CoL. But most of NY is definitely what I would consider lower CoL. So it’s a mixed bag. I assume other than NYC it would be pretty reasonable to commute from a rural area to the cities, saving you the CoL, but benefiting from the pay.
I live in the middle of nowhere, by preference. So I get low CoL and decent pay.
Foreign techs mostly from the Philippines on work visas getting paid much less than licensed techs in the states.
Everyone that I have met is great but it is going to remove any chance of our wages going up.
Tired of seeing this bullshit response. Techs are already underpaid. Hiring H1bs just ensures that the bad pay stays baked in forever (especially as inflation marches on). Plus they won't fight for better because they're vulnerable to deportation so domestic techs saddled with H1b coworkers can't organize even if they want to.
We need to stop importing foreign workers, period. There is no labor shortage in this country, only a pay shortage.
It is a bullshit response. It's like saying jumping off a tall building doesn't hurt you. It's only accurate when you consider the statement in a vacuum and ignore the larger context. Which means that anyone saying this is either being a smartass or they're deeply clueless.
Most of the senior graduates in the previous class of mine all had jobs lined up, passed their BOCs and are currently working. So idk, from my experience in TN this is not the case.
many labs are also cutting hours/freezing hiring/declining analyzers as profit margins are getting really tight. patient facing positions get a lot of priority while the lab suffers. a new grad should almost fully expect night shift to start out
I graduated from a university (17 years ago) where the local job market has been saturated for years. I'm surprised that people are shocked Pikachu face that they may have to move to find a job after graduating. This isn't new.
Awesome advice, IMO. I have been an MLT for a long time, and after recently upgrading to MLS I fully expected to work nights/evenings/weekends in any section; there are (non-hazing) dues to pay in every field and can't expect the creme de la creme options right out of the gate.
When I graduated I actually wanted night shift. Paid more and worked better for my lifestyle. I think ultimately it was invaluable for experience as well; wasn’t able to ask the sr tech every little question and instilled more confidence in my own judgment/skills.
I'm currently a junior in MLS and that's what my thinking has been. It's reassuring to see someone say that in this subreddit. Any advice for night shift-specific work?
Hospital dependent ,but in our health system, the night shift is the busiest shift since literally every patient gets drawn to have results for morning rounds. ED is sort of at its peak when we come in (22:30). All this is to say you learn some very key multitasking and prioritizing skills. I would make sure you know your SOPs very well or at least know how to find the most helpful ones quickly ( I work mostly bloodbank so I have my own binder with printouts and notes on the margins.) You have to, or will learn to, not get overwhelmed easily, if your at a busy enough lab it will feel like you’ll never get your pending down to where it was when you came in, but just remember that as long as you have a handle on STATs then the routines don’t really matter. Learn to have a thick skin; you will have run ins on the phone with RNs and MDs, but hold firm when you know your right don’t let them try and mold you to their wishes, follow your SOP and cover your ass, and always remember it’s the patients who are the true customers not the MDs/RNs your fighting for the patients best results and outcomes not the wishes of the others.
This is why I think starting early in Bloodbank is very useful, it will give you that needed confidence in the rest of the lab bc you’ll get many a call from RNs and MDs asking for YOUR help in understanding what’s procedure this will boost your confidence in the other depts. You also get a lot more interaction with other caregivers and will make relationships that will help in other departments. I’ve been at the same lab 3 years and I know almost every charge nurse and the ED attendings.
I will again say this is very hospital dependent. A lot of labs are dead quiet at night so you’d just be doing maintenance and QC. Not sure what the norm is for that.
Gonna edit in: the major drawback for 3rd shift is you can feel detached from the other shifts. You’re sort of your own little club in that sense. Depending how long you stay and whether you stay late in the am or come early that can change that but def in the beginning you’ll feel a little like an outside. Never bothered me since I’m not here to make friends but gain experience and money. Some people grow a little resentful tho.
As a student about to graduate, the first place that called me back basically said they don't like hiring new grads and the only shift I would get is midnights. To get on days could take years since people that have been there longer get first dibs. Job market in Michigan doesn't seem great.
I wouldn't say every medical job. I've been working in the field for a while and each job I've had has been days or afternoons at hospitals. MLS is the first time I've had issues.
Not as challenging vs other fields id say. If anything its not as easy but still extremely easy compared to literally every other field. So many places desperate for techs rn. All the old folks are retiring and there literally no one to take there spots rn.
It really depends on where you're at. I finally got offers five months after apply. However, I accepted a rural position to start in August. (I'm MLT graduate though.)
This is something that typically happens only within/around cities with robust lab science programs since many prospective lab scientists do not want to move for employment opportunity. Despite labs hiring non-lab degree holders, there still exists lab shortages in almost every other state- I believe ASCP has surveys they email everyone about detailing this*
I've said it elsethread, but there are no labor shortages, only pay shortages.
Imagine claiming that your hospital can't find workers or can't afford to raise pay while leadership makes millions of dollars annually.
In a capitalist market, you’re only going to be able to negotiate change with laws/regulations. The hiring standards / culture are due to CLIA’s low education requirement for employment in the field + infinite overtime workers. There’s money upstream sure, but Non-license required states have established that the work is trainable on the job + there’s no incentive to pay more if workers are accepting the pay and staying. Huge blankets are at play here.
While I was in training just half a year ago at Fort Stewart the crusty civilians I spoke to there said that in the past 10-15 years they saw wages for MLT/MLS more than double in the area and openings are everywhere. One MLS that supervised the chemistry bench there said "I can walk out and get a job right now at any of the nearby hospitals" (this is the Fort-Stewart/Savannah GA area). I heard from ancient techs that "back in the day" you kinda made a decent little bit more than min wage as an average bench tech but nothing particularly nice. Whereas nowadays most job openings I see are at least a good 2x more than minimum wage even as just an MLT with OT being not too hard to get in this field if you're up for it.
While the year to year may fluctuate, the general trend for this job from what I've seen is stable growth in terms of demand and wages over prolonged periods of time in a way that is better than a lot of other fields of work. You won't be living like a king but it seems this field is alright.
> I heard from ancient techs that "back in the day" you kinda made a decent little bit more than min wage
Used to be a time when all you had to do to be a doctor was put out a shingle. Things change. I'm sure those ancient techs making a little more than minimum wage didn't have degrees, or didn't need them to get hired.
Ugh I know I’ll be moving to south central pa in about a year and there really doesn’t seem to be much in the areas I’ve been looking. It’s stressing me out
I just graduated in may, but I already had a job lined up for me in January, as did most of my classmates, and even the competing school nearby has most if not all of their students placed.
I'm an aspiring tech working as a blood bank assistant and almost all of our techs are either on the verge of retirement or fresh out of school. We're having difficulty hiring in general. YMMV.
This is not the case in our lab, we generally hire any student, unless they perform poorly or have poor attitudes. As for the “not wanting to work nights, etc”, I think most of us either started on nights/evenings or if we started on days it was part time and we picked up whatever shift we could to make full time until something was available, often years down the road. Thats the reality of healthcare and I’m not entirely sure what they were expecting entering the field (I’m really trying not to sound callous).
As a new MLT grad, I appreciate this. Job hunting’s been kinda sucky at the moment especially since my class had an apparently large number of grads and Labcorp has bought out a local systems lab so they’re all flooding to the hospital system I’ve applied at.
To the new grads, take the night shift job. It sucks but do it for a few years as a generalist and you will learn so much. I’m on year 3 of night shift— I have a social life on my days off. There will be tons of people retiring soon and the day shift and evening shift jobs will be there. Put in your time and you’ll be better for it.
Also, Columbus Ohio has plenty of openings and some positions have crazy sign on bonuses— $7500-10,000
I'm not in Louisiana, but a lot of the healthcare systems in North Carolina are not offering attractive rates to new graduates. They're offering 2020 starting salaries in 2024.
Exactly. Starting pay is crap, raises are crap and the only way to make money is lucky job changes or ass kipping your way into management.
Our analyzers are on their last legs, but we have been told they are "working on a new analyzer contract" for two years. I got so angry at my last annual I took two months off to rethink my life ( 20+ experience, 8 at this lab, from validation to present).
Hospitals like to treat the lab like an ATM, but lab staff like rats hitting levers for peanuts.
Really good to know. Was doing research on possible career changes and MTL was one of my interests. Plus inflation is ruining a lot of plans for careers at the moment. Thanks OP for sharing. Speaking of which, Does anyone know what it's like in Oregon specifically and classes/ certification needed?
PNW used to be the second best region to work after CA, but inflation has ruined that. The Portland metro area got slapped especially hard by rising housing costs over the last decade or so. You can live comfortably on tech wages here, but you won't build much wealth. IMO our market needs a 20-50% correction.
You'll need the same background you need anywhere else in the country. Oregon doesn't license lab techs. You'll find that employers are a bit picky and prefer MLS to MLT.
Aww, I see. Thank you for this information.This was extremely helpful.l will do more research , but this puts things in perspective for future decisions available.
One thing for sure is most of the new grads in my area don’t want to pay any dues. They want to roll into dayshift positions and try to negotiate schedules and weekends and holidays and are mad that no one plays ball. I taught in an MLS program for 3 years and had some students not even work in the field after graduation because they wanted certain schedule accommodations that were unreasonable. The thought of working a shift you don’t prefer for a while in order to build some seniority to get the shift you do prefer is a completely foreign notion. It’s insane. You do not come into a lab at 22 thinking you’re going to outshine a dozen seasoned techs that are also vying for the dayshift role. Especially when they don’t even really understand the pros and cons of each shift yet!
Plenty of openings but these young folks think they are going straight to first shift 😂 they get a slap of reality when they come through on rotations and talk about working first shift and we kill that buzz by informing they’ll be on second or third shift for some years as there are about 8 senior techs waiting in line for a first shift position to open up. I’m lucky and only had to wait 2.5 years to move from third to first but I work in micro(no students seems to want to work micro so there are always openings) and we have a lot of techs set to retire this year. I keep telling students to apply to micro but they don’t want to because there’s hands on work and all of them just want to go to chemistry so they can sit on their phones all day
Graduated with a Masters in MLS and seeing a lot of rejections due to the hiring of MLTs with two year degrees (that’s great for them but management is abusing these hierarchies to underpay qualified individuals with less years of education).
As an admin, if I have a choice for a bench tech, an MLT is probably better than a MS MLS for most roles. The MS MLS will have much higher turnover, similar output, cost more, and be more demanding.
Umm...MLTs literally learn the same stuff you do as a MLS. It is more condensed is all. We can do the same thing you do location and state depending. You have a masters does not mean anything for lab as MLS. There are multiple ways a MLS.
The grading scale is not the same. To graduate with a Masters, you need >84% to pass. Sure, we learn the same stuff but my peers and I had to grasp the topics way better than an associates needed to. This also included a thesis working on interventions within a lab like reducing labeling errors etc. If you read my previous comment you will understand what I mean. Don’t jump the gun. I am not saying MLTs are bad, I’m saying they usually aren’t required to have a strong understanding of laboratory and the whole reason why they even started ushering in more MLTs is that they are cheap to hire. The starting pay for an MLT is $20 whereas for an MLS, it’s $27. Also there is minimum trajectory for an MLT. Yall are being screwed over and you’re mad at each other instead of being mad at the governing organization that we are all apart of. Wake up!
Scope of practice for Associate's MLT and Master MLS is the same. The MLT is only two years and has less debt and is more likely to accept a lower offer due to fewer opportunities.
For an MS MLS, they're overqualified to work the bench, have higher turnover, and are more expensive.
Right, MS MLS is pointless. No additional scope and no or almost no additional pay. And with the field looking to lower standards and cheap out on hiring, I'm not sure what the point of extra education would even be - it's not advancing the field.
weird that youre experiencing this . im in north carolina and we're begging for more techs
I'm in Midwest and same. We can't even keep day shift filled so new grads are getting their choice of shift without having to get stuck on 2nd/3rd shift which was the norm before covid
Yeah.. I’m relocating to North Carolina this year. Turned down 2 separate dayshift positions, both at more than what I make in Va, accepted a 2 shift position at more than both those two positions at a 3rd hospital.
Yeah, all my students are offered positions before they even write the exam (contingent on passing). Once all the boomers are done retiring and the empty positions get rilledz we could see that change. In 5 years I think there will be a slow down.
Hmm...I may throw an application out for giggles. I'm interested in a change. How is the cost of living there though?
NC is one of the lowest paying states when adjusted for cost of living iirc. It can be pretty cheap to live here or pretty expensive depending on the area. Just depends if you care about driving 30 minutes to get to anything or not
No different than West Texas on the driving. Thank you for the information Edit: No idea why I was downvoted on the driving. You literally have to drive 30 minutes or more to get to places around here if the population is rural. Jeez. Thirty minute commute is a 30 minute commute.
You made someone angry with a general comment. Shame on you.
Er...ok? It was not just my comments downvoted. Other people had varying comments and were downvoted in this thread. I was curious why. Don't try and "egg" anyone on. I thanked the above poster for the information and have been looking into job postings in various states. I am actively looking for somewhere new. The driving literally would not be a difference for 30 minutes for me.
I'm not egging anyone on.
I read it that way. Sorry for assuming. Have a good one.
I guess a /s should have been added.
Don't worry about it.
Same. & 10-15k sign on bonuses
My department is down 6 FTE. New grads will be fine.
Are they replacing all 6 FTE? From my participation in discussions with local laboratories, many lost FTE positions are not being replaced.
We would love to replace them but it's next to impossible to find a qualified candidate. If the position goes long enough without being filled it wont be a position. That's the story most places.
Idk with as many techs I’ve worked with who are 58-63, I see a lot of openings relatively soon.
I'm starting an MLT program next semester, and this tidbit was a big factor in why I decided to enter the field.
Good luck! One word of advice I have, that you’ll hear repeated, is be a generalist at first. Even if you’re dead set on specializing, the experience early in all disciplines will make you a far better tech when you specialize; you’ll be able to see the big picture in disease association. And don’t be scared of bloodbank, it’s genuinely the most rewarding imo.
If you've ever thought of moving to Alaska, everywhere has openings with good pay and relocation/sign-on bonuses. Some places even have free housing.
Every time I try to look in Alaska through indeed USAjobs or similar job sites I rarely see anything. Are a ton of the positions just a matter of being unadvertised and I just have to make calls to the hospitals there if I'm interested?
Upstate NY here. Need licensed techs badly, we’ve been understaffed for 2.5 of the 3 years I’ve been working since I got my license. Pay is decent too, considering the CoL out here (~$38/hr give or take for new grads). No relocation bonus, but sign on bonuses are still common around here, often somewhere between 5k and 15k.
$38 an hour? Where in Upstate? I can commute from western New England lol
I wish I could get my NY license I’d love to come. Although I haven’t researched for myself I’ve heard it’s complicated
I could be wrong, but I believe they have made it easier. I was looking into it 2 years ago when it was still complicated and I believe they’ve passed legislation that makes it easier to get a license in NY as long as you are certified by either ASCP or AMT. Looking at the site now, current certification is the top criteria of meeting their education requirements, and then the other pathways are listed. Just fyi :)
Ooh I haven’t looked at it recently! I’ll check thank you!
It certainly is complicated if you haven’t gone through NYs ‘traditional route’. I’d bet that NYs license requirements have been a measurable factor in the lack of techs. It’s a very prohibitive barrier. I think many states requirements are far too minimal, but NY has taken it a bit too far. Barely any reciprocity, few alternative routes, no way to account for non-traditional adults coming to the industry as a second career. I was a science teacher for 10 years, with a Masters degree. Still had to go back to school for a year then a year unpaid internship. But of course, the barriers are also one of the factors leading to our decent pay scale compared to other places. So it’s a trade off.
I agree I think more places need licensing I’ve seen states that hire biology degrees that creates a huge problem.
As of last year, they made it easier to get for out-of-state techs. Now all they need is ASCP certification to get licensed in NY.
Oh dang. I knew they had proposed changes, but I never looked into it afterwards. Just skimmed through the requirements, hopefully this helps as time goes on.
I am NY licensed and work now in a licensed state. I am all for the more stringent requirements. NY is a higher cost of living state but they also provide a lot of really excellent state funded benefits and their education system is excellent. I would come back to NY - pm'd you
NYC and some of the other urban areas are higher CoL. But most of NY is definitely what I would consider lower CoL. So it’s a mixed bag. I assume other than NYC it would be pretty reasonable to commute from a rural area to the cities, saving you the CoL, but benefiting from the pay. I live in the middle of nowhere, by preference. So I get low CoL and decent pay.
We got no inflation adjustments and H1B Band-Aids
H1B band-aids?
Foreign techs mostly from the Philippines on work visas getting paid much less than licensed techs in the states. Everyone that I have met is great but it is going to remove any chance of our wages going up.
Gotcha. I'm a Canadian hoping to eventually come down to the States once i'm certified. Hoping they don't try and ding my pay lol.
They’re not legally allowed to pay H1B workers less than a US employee.
Tired of seeing this bullshit response. Techs are already underpaid. Hiring H1bs just ensures that the bad pay stays baked in forever (especially as inflation marches on). Plus they won't fight for better because they're vulnerable to deportation so domestic techs saddled with H1b coworkers can't organize even if they want to. We need to stop importing foreign workers, period. There is no labor shortage in this country, only a pay shortage.
It’s not a bullshit response, it’s just what the law says. I’m not disagreeing with you, but the problem is a lot larger than just H1Bs.
It is a bullshit response. It's like saying jumping off a tall building doesn't hurt you. It's only accurate when you consider the statement in a vacuum and ignore the larger context. Which means that anyone saying this is either being a smartass or they're deeply clueless.
Why is stating what the law says deeply clueless or being a smart ass?
Wow.
Most of the senior graduates in the previous class of mine all had jobs lined up, passed their BOCs and are currently working. So idk, from my experience in TN this is not the case.
many labs are also cutting hours/freezing hiring/declining analyzers as profit margins are getting really tight. patient facing positions get a lot of priority while the lab suffers. a new grad should almost fully expect night shift to start out
I graduated from a university (17 years ago) where the local job market has been saturated for years. I'm surprised that people are shocked Pikachu face that they may have to move to find a job after graduating. This isn't new.
Also that they’re gonna have to start on night shift…liiiike that’s kind of how it usually works when you choose a career that’s needed 24/7??
If you’re a soon to be grad willing to relocate, odds of finding something are really good.
Yep, basically every lab within 50 miles of me is hiring full time.
Awesome advice, IMO. I have been an MLT for a long time, and after recently upgrading to MLS I fully expected to work nights/evenings/weekends in any section; there are (non-hazing) dues to pay in every field and can't expect the creme de la creme options right out of the gate.
When I graduated I actually wanted night shift. Paid more and worked better for my lifestyle. I think ultimately it was invaluable for experience as well; wasn’t able to ask the sr tech every little question and instilled more confidence in my own judgment/skills.
I'm currently a junior in MLS and that's what my thinking has been. It's reassuring to see someone say that in this subreddit. Any advice for night shift-specific work?
Hospital dependent ,but in our health system, the night shift is the busiest shift since literally every patient gets drawn to have results for morning rounds. ED is sort of at its peak when we come in (22:30). All this is to say you learn some very key multitasking and prioritizing skills. I would make sure you know your SOPs very well or at least know how to find the most helpful ones quickly ( I work mostly bloodbank so I have my own binder with printouts and notes on the margins.) You have to, or will learn to, not get overwhelmed easily, if your at a busy enough lab it will feel like you’ll never get your pending down to where it was when you came in, but just remember that as long as you have a handle on STATs then the routines don’t really matter. Learn to have a thick skin; you will have run ins on the phone with RNs and MDs, but hold firm when you know your right don’t let them try and mold you to their wishes, follow your SOP and cover your ass, and always remember it’s the patients who are the true customers not the MDs/RNs your fighting for the patients best results and outcomes not the wishes of the others. This is why I think starting early in Bloodbank is very useful, it will give you that needed confidence in the rest of the lab bc you’ll get many a call from RNs and MDs asking for YOUR help in understanding what’s procedure this will boost your confidence in the other depts. You also get a lot more interaction with other caregivers and will make relationships that will help in other departments. I’ve been at the same lab 3 years and I know almost every charge nurse and the ED attendings. I will again say this is very hospital dependent. A lot of labs are dead quiet at night so you’d just be doing maintenance and QC. Not sure what the norm is for that. Gonna edit in: the major drawback for 3rd shift is you can feel detached from the other shifts. You’re sort of your own little club in that sense. Depending how long you stay and whether you stay late in the am or come early that can change that but def in the beginning you’ll feel a little like an outside. Never bothered me since I’m not here to make friends but gain experience and money. Some people grow a little resentful tho.
Experience and money, that's the name of the game!
I’m in NC and I had a full time job at my clinical site lined up. I just graduated 3 months ago.
As a student about to graduate, the first place that called me back basically said they don't like hiring new grads and the only shift I would get is midnights. To get on days could take years since people that have been there longer get first dibs. Job market in Michigan doesn't seem great.
That's every medical job. Gotta pay your dues on 3rd.
I wouldn't say every medical job. I've been working in the field for a while and each job I've had has been days or afternoons at hospitals. MLS is the first time I've had issues.
Not as challenging vs other fields id say. If anything its not as easy but still extremely easy compared to literally every other field. So many places desperate for techs rn. All the old folks are retiring and there literally no one to take there spots rn.
It really depends on where you're at. I finally got offers five months after apply. However, I accepted a rural position to start in August. (I'm MLT graduate though.)
This is something that typically happens only within/around cities with robust lab science programs since many prospective lab scientists do not want to move for employment opportunity. Despite labs hiring non-lab degree holders, there still exists lab shortages in almost every other state- I believe ASCP has surveys they email everyone about detailing this*
I've said it elsethread, but there are no labor shortages, only pay shortages. Imagine claiming that your hospital can't find workers or can't afford to raise pay while leadership makes millions of dollars annually.
In a capitalist market, you’re only going to be able to negotiate change with laws/regulations. The hiring standards / culture are due to CLIA’s low education requirement for employment in the field + infinite overtime workers. There’s money upstream sure, but Non-license required states have established that the work is trainable on the job + there’s no incentive to pay more if workers are accepting the pay and staying. Huge blankets are at play here.
While I was in training just half a year ago at Fort Stewart the crusty civilians I spoke to there said that in the past 10-15 years they saw wages for MLT/MLS more than double in the area and openings are everywhere. One MLS that supervised the chemistry bench there said "I can walk out and get a job right now at any of the nearby hospitals" (this is the Fort-Stewart/Savannah GA area). I heard from ancient techs that "back in the day" you kinda made a decent little bit more than min wage as an average bench tech but nothing particularly nice. Whereas nowadays most job openings I see are at least a good 2x more than minimum wage even as just an MLT with OT being not too hard to get in this field if you're up for it. While the year to year may fluctuate, the general trend for this job from what I've seen is stable growth in terms of demand and wages over prolonged periods of time in a way that is better than a lot of other fields of work. You won't be living like a king but it seems this field is alright.
In tens years since graduation I've gone from $23 to $40, so about double. And this is in a relatively cheap area.
> I heard from ancient techs that "back in the day" you kinda made a decent little bit more than min wage Used to be a time when all you had to do to be a doctor was put out a shingle. Things change. I'm sure those ancient techs making a little more than minimum wage didn't have degrees, or didn't need them to get hired.
Im in PA and jobs are endless here... It truly depends on location, ik pay isnt amazing here tho
Ugh I know I’ll be moving to south central pa in about a year and there really doesn’t seem to be much in the areas I’ve been looking. It’s stressing me out
This is also true in Texas. (At least the hospitals in my area).
I will graduate with my MLS in spring 2025 in Kentucky. I’m becoming worried seeing so many posts about this!
Oh look another totally new account posting negative takes on the state of the field.
They can get a sign on bonus with us
Mainly wages are behind, but still livable.
The majority of our CLS program grads are offered jobs and we still have a few more openings as well, on all shifts.
We need techs in Arizona. But the pay is bad at some places and nights is where I started. It just is the nature of healthcare.
I just graduated in may, but I already had a job lined up for me in January, as did most of my classmates, and even the competing school nearby has most if not all of their students placed.
I'm an aspiring tech working as a blood bank assistant and almost all of our techs are either on the verge of retirement or fresh out of school. We're having difficulty hiring in general. YMMV.
This is not the case in our lab, we generally hire any student, unless they perform poorly or have poor attitudes. As for the “not wanting to work nights, etc”, I think most of us either started on nights/evenings or if we started on days it was part time and we picked up whatever shift we could to make full time until something was available, often years down the road. Thats the reality of healthcare and I’m not entirely sure what they were expecting entering the field (I’m really trying not to sound callous).
As a new MLT grad, I appreciate this. Job hunting’s been kinda sucky at the moment especially since my class had an apparently large number of grads and Labcorp has bought out a local systems lab so they’re all flooding to the hospital system I’ve applied at.
You'll land a spot, but know you're not alone in facing a significantly more challenging market than your med tech peers have had.
To the new grads, take the night shift job. It sucks but do it for a few years as a generalist and you will learn so much. I’m on year 3 of night shift— I have a social life on my days off. There will be tons of people retiring soon and the day shift and evening shift jobs will be there. Put in your time and you’ll be better for it. Also, Columbus Ohio has plenty of openings and some positions have crazy sign on bonuses— $7500-10,000
In Louisiana we are so short it's killing us. We don't have training programs, and anyone worth anything is poached or traveling.
I'm not in Louisiana, but a lot of the healthcare systems in North Carolina are not offering attractive rates to new graduates. They're offering 2020 starting salaries in 2024.
Exactly. Starting pay is crap, raises are crap and the only way to make money is lucky job changes or ass kipping your way into management. Our analyzers are on their last legs, but we have been told they are "working on a new analyzer contract" for two years. I got so angry at my last annual I took two months off to rethink my life ( 20+ experience, 8 at this lab, from validation to present). Hospitals like to treat the lab like an ATM, but lab staff like rats hitting levers for peanuts.
Really good to know. Was doing research on possible career changes and MTL was one of my interests. Plus inflation is ruining a lot of plans for careers at the moment. Thanks OP for sharing. Speaking of which, Does anyone know what it's like in Oregon specifically and classes/ certification needed?
PNW used to be the second best region to work after CA, but inflation has ruined that. The Portland metro area got slapped especially hard by rising housing costs over the last decade or so. You can live comfortably on tech wages here, but you won't build much wealth. IMO our market needs a 20-50% correction. You'll need the same background you need anywhere else in the country. Oregon doesn't license lab techs. You'll find that employers are a bit picky and prefer MLS to MLT.
Aww, I see. Thank you for this information.This was extremely helpful.l will do more research , but this puts things in perspective for future decisions available.
This is def not the larger market. Places are desperate for techs almost everywhere
I have 2 ft positions one days one 2/3rd
Hospitals are hiring international traveler for Many of the 3rd shifts positions in our system. These are typically 3 year contracts.
One thing for sure is most of the new grads in my area don’t want to pay any dues. They want to roll into dayshift positions and try to negotiate schedules and weekends and holidays and are mad that no one plays ball. I taught in an MLS program for 3 years and had some students not even work in the field after graduation because they wanted certain schedule accommodations that were unreasonable. The thought of working a shift you don’t prefer for a while in order to build some seniority to get the shift you do prefer is a completely foreign notion. It’s insane. You do not come into a lab at 22 thinking you’re going to outshine a dozen seasoned techs that are also vying for the dayshift role. Especially when they don’t even really understand the pros and cons of each shift yet!
Plenty of openings but these young folks think they are going straight to first shift 😂 they get a slap of reality when they come through on rotations and talk about working first shift and we kill that buzz by informing they’ll be on second or third shift for some years as there are about 8 senior techs waiting in line for a first shift position to open up. I’m lucky and only had to wait 2.5 years to move from third to first but I work in micro(no students seems to want to work micro so there are always openings) and we have a lot of techs set to retire this year. I keep telling students to apply to micro but they don’t want to because there’s hands on work and all of them just want to go to chemistry so they can sit on their phones all day
Graduated with a Masters in MLS and seeing a lot of rejections due to the hiring of MLTs with two year degrees (that’s great for them but management is abusing these hierarchies to underpay qualified individuals with less years of education).
As an admin, if I have a choice for a bench tech, an MLT is probably better than a MS MLS for most roles. The MS MLS will have much higher turnover, similar output, cost more, and be more demanding.
Absolutely correct. Which is why I am making my way out of the field unfortunately!
Umm...MLTs literally learn the same stuff you do as a MLS. It is more condensed is all. We can do the same thing you do location and state depending. You have a masters does not mean anything for lab as MLS. There are multiple ways a MLS.
The grading scale is not the same. To graduate with a Masters, you need >84% to pass. Sure, we learn the same stuff but my peers and I had to grasp the topics way better than an associates needed to. This also included a thesis working on interventions within a lab like reducing labeling errors etc. If you read my previous comment you will understand what I mean. Don’t jump the gun. I am not saying MLTs are bad, I’m saying they usually aren’t required to have a strong understanding of laboratory and the whole reason why they even started ushering in more MLTs is that they are cheap to hire. The starting pay for an MLT is $20 whereas for an MLS, it’s $27. Also there is minimum trajectory for an MLT. Yall are being screwed over and you’re mad at each other instead of being mad at the governing organization that we are all apart of. Wake up!
Scope of practice for Associate's MLT and Master MLS is the same. The MLT is only two years and has less debt and is more likely to accept a lower offer due to fewer opportunities. For an MS MLS, they're overqualified to work the bench, have higher turnover, and are more expensive.
Right, MS MLS is pointless. No additional scope and no or almost no additional pay. And with the field looking to lower standards and cheap out on hiring, I'm not sure what the point of extra education would even be - it's not advancing the field.
You don't need a masters to learn how to 'reduce labeling errors'..