| With the economy reopening and labor scarce, all kinds of U.S. workers have been getting pay raises, and some of the biggest are going to travel nurses.
There are about 30,000 U.S. openings for travel nurses — who aren't attached to a single hospital and work on short-term contracts — according to SimpliFi, a health-care staffing firm. That's up some almost a third from last winter's peak, and still climbing. Salaries have jumped too, with rates as high as $8,000 a week advertised for a three-month assignment. Demand for nurses has spiked during the pandemic, reaching new highs with the current spread of the delta variant. Meanwhile, the strain of dealing with the outbreak has led many nurses to quit, and hospitals and other health-care providers are struggling to fill permanent positions –- leaving them more dependent on temporary employees.  Billing rates for travel nurses were up more than 40% in August from a year earlier, and up 60% for emergency-room specialists, according to SimpliFi. Florida, with one-sixth of the nation's hospitalized Covid-19 patients, Texas and California had the greatest needs. Second-quarter revenue at AMN Healthcare Services, the nation's largest medical staffing firm, rose more than 40% from a year earlier, the company said, and bookings of nurses in July were double the April-June level. Natural disasters like Hurricane Ida, which hit Louisiana Sunday, also tend to trigger strong demand for nurses, according to Kathy Kohnke, senior vice-president at Fastaff Travel Nursing. "Typically during the arrival of a hurricane, hospitals discharge as many patients as possible," she says. "Due to Covid, that wasn't an option." Her company already had a lot of staffers in New Orleans dealing with the pandemic; now she expects the need for nurses there will increase "exponentially." —Alex Tanzi | 
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