Becoming a nurse during Covid, a former producer doubled her hours but found a purpose
This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.
This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.
Unlike most people who switched jobs during the Great Resignation, Shannon Penney is working twice as much for roughly the same pay she made years ago. She wouldn’t change it.
Penney, 37, became disenchanted nearly a decade ago with her work as a freelancer in the advertising industry, but it took the pandemic for her to make a change. The decision dawned on her in the ER, sick with Covid-19 in the early days of a pandemic that would hammer her soon-to-be profession in ways it’s still recovering from.
“It put a bookmark in my head of like: This is really important,” said Penney, who recently completed her first full year as a registered nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.
Primary source of income: Working full-time as a registered nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital making $120,000 annually. That works out to roughly as much as she netted as a producer earning $1,200 per day but rarely notching consistent workweeks. She now has an employer-sponsored retirement account for the first time, but her hours are much longer.
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