Higher DSP wages still line up with lower turnover, and still miss a living wage

Researchers revisiting an earlier study of direct support turnover presented a 2026 poster built on National Core Indicators staffing data. Average hourly DSP wages in the agencies they studied rose from $12.22 in 2018 to $17.86 in 2024.

The relationship they found in 2018 still held. Higher wages were associated with lower annual turnover. Higher vacancy rates, and pay or referral bonus programs, were associated with higher turnover. More agencies offered benefits in 2024 than in 2018, with employer-paid disability insurance as an exception.

The authors’ conclusion is blunt about the limit of that progress. Wages moved after the pandemic and after federal relief dollars, and they are still short of a living wage. Pay alone has not stabilized the workforce.

That is the national backdrop for the state rate fights above: a few dollars on a wage floor, argued over for a year, against a job that still turns over.