A new study finds that the COVID-19 pandemic narrowed the wage gap between high and low paid workers in the health care industry, as the lowest earners saw the biggest boost in pay in the years since the pandemic began. The findings show a sharp disruption of a decades-long trend in which the wage gap had consistently widened, with high income earners enjoying the biggest pay gains.

Janette Dill, an associate health policy professor at the University of Minnesota, co-authored the Health Affairs study. She said her team at the U of M’s School of Public Health had witnessed this narrowing wage gap pattern in other industries and wanted to determine if it was also happening in the health care industry.

“We found that workers who had the lowest levels of education — so those with a high scho

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