Hey {{first_name|there}} 👋
There's a CNA pivot that pays roughly $49,000 more per year than what you're making now, and it isn't RN. The catch is real, but so is the math. We get to it down below.
First, why 300 CNAs in the country's highest-paid wage-floor state walked out anyway. Plus where state Medicaid cuts are landing on your shift, and a patient who said thank-you with a pencil sketch.
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ONE ASK
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THE PAY CHECK
Money, wages, and what you’re worth.
$22.50 was the floor. They want more.
Here's what every CNA in the country has a stake in this month. Minnesota wrote the highest CNA wage floor in the U.S. last year: $22.50/hour, effective January 2026. (We covered it in March.) Last month, 300 workers at five Twin Cities facilities walked off the job anyway.
The members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa work at The Estates at St. Louis Park, Roseville, Fridley, and Excelsior, plus Cerenity Senior Care at Humboldt in St. Paul. They struck on April 20 for a 72-hour walkout. Their ask: higher wages, better benefits, safer staffing. Their employer's last, best and final offer: 2%. The union filed bad-faith bargaining charges with the NLRB.
A 23-year LPN on the picket line: "We get low pay and heavy, heavy client loads. And we don't have enough staff. They don't respect us."
Why this matters to you: if your state ever passes a CNA wage floor, this is what comes next. The floor sets a number. It doesn't fix the staffing, the workload, or the respect. Union shops are where workers argue for more on top. Search "SEIU" or "AFSCME" plus your city to see whether any facilities in your area are organized. Most locals publish their list of contracts.
SHIFT REPORT
What’s happening in CNA world this week.
If turnover on your floor feels worse than the numbers say, you're right
A new study from Virginia Commonwealth and the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy found CMS's turnover formula excludes any worker who put in fewer than 120 hours in their first 90 days. By 2023, that exclusion was hiding nearly half of all new hires from the public data. The "short-term staffing" the researchers flagged as a large and growing share of the workforce is exactly the churn you live with on shift. None of it shows up in your facility's star rating. Your read wasn't wrong. The math was.
McKnight'sState Medicaid cuts are showing up as closed beds and frozen shifts
When state Medicaid funding gets cut, the first thing to give on the floor is staffing. Rockingham County Nursing Home in New Hampshire just took 51 of its 226 beds offline because it can't fill the shifts, after losing about 9% of its per-resident care funding (roughly $26.43 per resident per day). New Hampshire's legislature is debating a separate 9.11% cut. Idaho is running a 4% provider rate cut for FY 2026. Colorado reversed a planned 1.6% rate increase. If your facility has been closing beds, consolidating units, or freezing hiring, this is usually the upstream reason.
Skilled Nursing News
FROM THE FLOOR
Real talk from the job.
She handed me a thank-you. A pencil sketch of me.
A post made the rounds online this week. A CNA was helping a patient when she noticed the woman quietly drawing on a piece of paper. Turns out she was sketching the CNA. That was the thank-you.
You don't get notes like this often. Most of the appreciation in this job, when it comes at all, is fast and unspoken. A hand reaching for yours on the way out the door. An extra please. A resident remembering your name when they don't usually remember anyone's.
YOUR MOVE
Career paths, certifications, and what comes next.
The biggest pay jump CNAs can make without nursing school
If the Pay Check made you think about how to actually move your number up, here's the steepest payoff on the site. Diagnostic medical sonographers (ultrasound techs) earn a median of $89,340/year per BLS May 2024 data. That's roughly $49,000 above the CNA median, about $4,100 more per month. The top 10% clear $123,000.
The catch: this is the longest of the non-nursing pivots. Most CNAs go through a 2-year associate degree (AAS) at a community college, plus prerequisites that can add a semester. Admissions are competitive. The work itself is repetitive precision scanning, which trades CNA-style lifting and transfers for ergonomic strain on your wrists, shoulders, and back.
What transfers: your bedside communication and patient-care experience. You'll be more comfortable with patients on day one than classmates entering with no healthcare background. Once you're working, adding a vascular (RVT) or cardiac (RDCS) credential on top of the general RDMS typically pushes pay another $5,000 to $15,000.
BREAK ROOM
You’ve earned a laugh.
The least they owe you
Confession someone made this week, six months into the job:
"I love milk. The hospital milk cartons are not safe when I'm on shift. It is the least I'm owed. That is all."
By her own math, probably about $10,000 worth in six months. We're not checking the math.
That's your brief for this week. Back in your inbox next Wednesday.
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The CNA Brief
A publication of thecnaguide.com.