Transcription Pay - It's all downhill now - 2Poor2Live

Wonder why you have a hard time trying to make a living in transcription?

Let's do the math to see why that is.

In 1995 the average line rate was 8 cents per 65 character line.

In 2010 the average line rate is still 8 cents per 65 character line.

At 3% cost of living increase per year (generally inflation iis more than 3%), that puts your salary now at  45% BEHIND for Cost of Living adjustments over the last 15 years.

In 1995 we were paid for ALL characters typed.

In 2010 MTs are putting in patient information, dates of birth, researching courtesy copy information all for free so that a 2 minute dictation with a courtesy copy request that used to take 8 minutes to transcribe, now requires an extra 2  minutes to do all that research = 25% of your time spent working for free! 

In essence for every 60 minutes you work, 15 minutes of that hour you will be working for free, and magically working a 40 hour week, you are only seeing a paycheck for 30 hours of work because again, you worked 10 hours for FREE!

In summary, totaling up the 45% COLA increase MTs never got, which in 2010 should be an additional four cents a line,  and the 25% MTs work for free now (2 cents a line/the 25% you USED to get paid for but don't now) by today's standard MTs should be making 14 cents a line.

And let's be real, in 1995 we used to get a few benefits - but today, no way.  Benefits are a thing of the past.  No PTO, No vacation time, No SS tax, no matching federal/state tax, nothing. 

Now, take your last pay check and multiply that by 160% - that's how much you should be making today in 2010 to have the same standard of living you had in 1995.

This is sweatshop labor in a nutshell, now called "Transcription."