UPDATE: Base Personal Support Worker Salary to be increased to $16.50 by April 01, 2016. The article below does not reflect this. It will be updated soon. For more details on this announcement, please click here.
1st phase of raise ($1.50) was marred by many issues. As a result, 2nd instalment of the raise ($1.50) was put on hold and will be rolled out on August 1st, 2015.
Click here if you’d like to learn on what led up to this raise.
Salary of a Personal Support Worker in Ontario is among the highest in its category of occupations in support of healthcare workers in Canada.
PSW salary varies greatly all across Ontario. There are many factors that affect their salary, such as:
- Experience
- Location (City)
- Continuing education
- Certain skills that are required by the employer
- Ability to speak read and write another language
According to Statistics Canada’s Labour force survey, following are the wages of a PSW in Ontario :
Low: $10.25
Median: $14.00
High: $20.00
Another website that has pay database for many Canadian occupations, estimates the Personal Support Worker salary in the range of $24,589 to $41,652 per year.
In general, Hospitals are the highest paying followed by City owned Long-Term Care homes. Check out the following infographic with details about Personal Support Worker Salary in Ontario
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As is evident, PSW salary is fairly competitive and is expected to get even better.
You see, Ontario Healthcare system is stressed by the rising healthcare costs. To prevent the situation from worsening further, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has developed “Healthcare Action Plan[a2] ” which aims at increasing home and community care funding.
Considering the fact that 70% of home and community care in Ontario is provided by Personal Support Workers and Community Support Workers, there will be more jobs for these healthcare workers.
But due to attrition of existing workforce and multifold increase in the number of seniors requiring care, it will be hard to catch-up with the demand for PSW’s.
Due to above mentioned antagonistic forces, PSW’s are going to be in high demand but there won’t be enough of them to fulfill that demand.
This means only one thing: Personal Support Worker’s salary will go up.
Real examples of hourly pay offered by employers
There is a wide array of pay scales for Personal Support Workers. Here are some of the examples of hourly pay offered by employers on Ontario. These snapshots have been taken from PSW job descriptions posted by various employees.
For facility based care through employment agencies
For Home/Residential Care through employment agencies
Independent/Private Long-Term Care homes (Nursing homes)
City owned Long-Term Care homes (Nursing homes)
Hospitals
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Great information!
It really helped me get some prospective on what PSW’s make.
Thanks.
Carrol, glad to know the information was helpful.
What is the average pay for a privately hired PSW in a home setting?
Thanks for your comment Bonnie.
For working in the community, PSW’s typically get paid anywhere upwards of $12.5/hour. This is the minimum. In general, it varies greatly and depends on many factors such as the employer and experience. Some employers compensate for travel while others don’t.
For Personal Support Workers who provide private care, the pay depends upon what has been negotiated between the family and the PSW.
There is a huge amount of disparity that exists between PSW’s working in the home care sector and those who work in hospitals and long-term care homes.
No mention on what wages should be on First Nation Reserves!!! I’ve been a psw for 5 yrs and no wage increases, except for COLA, of course. People are starting to realize that we should get a pay increase straight across the booad, not just the cities!!!!!!
St. Elizabeth of Thunder Bay claims they never received any govt. money and refuses to pay it’s employees the extra.
md, although Government promised $4 raise for PSWs last year over a three year old period however, it’s implementation has been marred with many problems.
Ministry of Health is aware of this situation and has acknowledged this. It is working on this issue to streamline the wage increase process.
I am currently a homecare psw in the Niagara region, when should we expect to see the $1.50 raise we have been given this year?
Is there a possibility that by April 2016, the base wage could be more than $16.50 for homecare psw workers or is that asking for too much?
Cortney, last year Liberal government had promised a $4 raise over a period of 3 years.
While the first phase of this raise ($1.50) was rolled out last year however there has been many issues related to that. Government is scrambling to fix all the issues related to the first raise and therefore have put the 2nd pay raise on hold for now.
As per the latest press release on this issue, Government plans to announce pay raise “very soon”.
Visit this section frequently to check for future updates.
Is there a cap on government raise, if you make over $16.50 will you still get the $1.50 raise?
Lynne, this is not something that is very clear yet.
Government is working on sorting everything out. That is why the $1.50 raise that was supposed to be rolled out on April 1st, has been postponed to August 1st, 2015.
Check out this page for future updates.
Hello,
My office mate told me yesterday that a PSW gets a salary of $20/hour right after graduation..i.e. no experience. Somehow I don’t believe it but he was pretty adamant that it is indeed the starting rate..
Just wondering what is going to happen to the pay rate after next years possible $1? Will we continue to get raises afterwards or just stay at the max of $19 for years to come?