Hey {{first_name|there}} 👋
A new CNA in NYC just landed $25/hour on day one. $27/hour with night differential. The federal median is closer to $20. Five dollars over the floor, before her first shift even started, isn't an accident. It's what a 1199 union shop pays.
Plus: vetted agencies for finding your next contract, travel gig, or per-diem shift. Gig apps lobbying eight states to escape staffing rules. And what visa changes mean for who's on your floor.
Let's get into it.
THE PAY CHECK
Money, wages, and what you’re worth.
A new NYC CNA just landed $25/hour, before night diff
A first-time CNA shared her offer this week: a SNF in New York City, 1199 union, paying just under $25/hour straight time and just over $27/hour with night differential. Less than a month after passing the state exam.
That's one CNA in one market. But the gap is the point. The federal BLS national CNA median is right around $20/hour. Five dollars an hour over that, on day one, is roughly $200 a week before tax.
Your move: on Indeed or your local job board, search "union CNA" or "CNA 1199" in your area. Union shops usually advertise the affiliation in the listing because the pay floor is the selling point. Pay tends to run highest in states with strong healthcare union density: New York, California, Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Washington.
SHIFT REPORT
What’s happening in CNA world this week.
Gig nursing apps are quietly lobbying 17 statehouses
ShiftKey, Clipboard Health, and CareRev are pushing carveout bills in eight states: Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, and Rhode Island. The rules they want out of are the ones that protect workers — requiring platforms to actually carry workers' comp on you, document what they're paying you, and verify your credentials before listing you with facilities. The same investigation describes a pricing practice called "surveillance wages": platforms track which CNAs accept lower offers and use that history to push the next offer down. Two CNAs on the same shift, on the same app, can be paid different amounts. This isn't hypothetical: states like Alabama, West Virginia, and Tennessee already exempt gig platforms from some worker-protection laws. If you work app shifts, screenshot the rate before you accept and save your pay records. If your state is on the carveout list, watch local SEIU or AFSCME alerts for where the bill stands.
AI Now InstituteVisa changes are squeezing nursing home staffing
Immigrant CNAs, LPNs, and RNs are roughly a quarter of the nursing home workforce nationally, and 40% at one Georgia operator profiled in Skilled Nursing News. Many have built years-long relationships with their residents, and the staffing math depends on them. Several pressures are tightening supply right now: a $100,000 H-1B petition fee in effect, tighter Temporary Protected Status rules (Haitian workers' TPS was revoked last November and Congress is looking to restore it), and shorter work-authorization renewals from DHS. Some operators have already had to fill care-team gaps overnight, and with fewer young workers entering caregiving, more disruptions are expected.
What this means for you: if you're working under TPS, H-1B, or humanitarian parole, check your status with HR and a qualified immigration attorney. If you're not, you'll still feel it in faster turnover, more absenteeism, and less continuity for the residents who've come to depend on you.
Skilled Nursing News
FROM THE FLOOR
Real talk from the job.
Six shifts, no breaks
A CNA just hit her sixth shift in a row without a real break. Twelve and a half hours each, on her feet the whole time, 95% of charting going undone because she can't sit down. The nurses around her are sitting and talking and laughing while she is, in her words, "borderline crying."
Working through breaks isn't grit. It's an unsafe shift that nobody is logging.
Skipping breaks isn't a CNA choice. It's what happens when there aren't enough hands. The fix isn't "be tougher." This is a staffing problem, not a CNA problem.
What's the longest you've gone without a real break, and what finally got you to sit down? Hit reply.
YOUR MOVE
Career paths, certifications, and what comes next.
Looking for new shifts, contracts, or a switch to travel? We rebuilt our agencies directory.
If you're thinking about picking up extra shifts, switching to per-diem, or chasing 13-week travel contracts, going through an agency is often the fastest path. Good agencies offer real benefits: health insurance, housing stipends on travel contracts, sign-on bonuses, weekly pay, and rates that often beat what facilities pay direct. The hard part is finding ones worth your time.
The CNA Guide just rebuilt our CNA Agencies Directory at thecnaguide.com/cna-agencies/. A growing list of vetted agencies across five categories: traditional staffing, travel, recruiting, marketplace platforms, and job boards. Each profile shows what they staff, the states they serve, the contract types they offer, and who they are.
When you reach out, you message the agency through a form on our site. We forward your message to the agency you chose, so you stay in control of who has your contact info instead of having it on a public list every recruiter can scrape. We're going to keep adding agencies and rolling out filters so you can sort by state, contract type, and benefits.
BREAK ROOM
You’ve earned a laugh.
The 3 a.m. panic-check
A CNA, five years in, asked a question that lands harder the longer you've been doing this: what part of your job makes you have to remind yourself it's actually part of your job?
Her answer: sneaking into a resident's room at night, putting gloves on as silently as humanly possible, easing the floor alarm off, peeling back the blanket. Then the half-second of panic where you're checking they're still breathing because they're so still.
When 'still breathing' is the best news of your shift.
What's yours? Hit reply with the part of your shift that, even years in, still feels strange. We'll round up the best ones for next issue.
That's your brief for this week. Back in your inbox next Wednesday.
Always improving: hit reply and tell us what you'd like to see more of, or less of. We read every response.
If this was useful, forward it to a CNA friend. They can sign up at the bottom of the page on https://thecnaguide.com/newsletter/.
See you next week
The CNA Brief
A publication of thecnaguide.com
P.S. If you're hunting for a travel contract or per-diem shift, our agencies directory is your shortcut. If you're thinking about a step up to LPN, RN, or beyond, see all the CNA career paths.