NSW nurses and midwives have lost around $80,000 each because of the public sector wage cap that has suppressed their pay for a decade.
The caps were introduced in 2012 and a new report from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) has found practitioners will suffer a cumulative loss of $120,000 in pay by 2023-24.
It also shows their superannuation balances will be a further $12,500 worse off.
Report author and director of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute Jim Stanford says the pay cap ignores normal wage determinants such as the rising cost of living, productivity or wage comparators.
"The consequences are severe for public sector nurses and midwives, and get worse over time because the sustained pay caps have a cumulating effect," he said on Wednesday.
"Not only are wage gains in any particular year lower than they would be under normal circumstances but the base level of pay falls further and further behind where they would be otherwise."
General Secretary of the NSWNMA Shaye Candish says nurses "will be unable to retire in dignity, the longer these cruel wage caps remain in place".
"Most nurses and midwives will fall well short of the thresholds considered for a 'comfortable' retirement," she said on Wednesday.
"This is a confronting prospect, especially for women, single retirees and renters.
"This says a lot about further gendered inequality that we already know exists and highlights how discriminatory wage caps are upon the female-dominated nursing and midwifery workforce."
The report found an experienced female nurse or midwife who is single and renting will fall more than 50 per cent below the comfortable retirement threshold.
NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary Michael Whaites is calling for the NSW government to "return to fairer, genuine collective bargaining with public sector workers and their unions, and stop making it harder to attract vital nurses and midwives".
