Ultimate Travel Nurse Salary Guide: From 2019 to Now! (August 2026)

Want to see how your travel nurse salary stacks up in this unpredictable travel nurse job market?

How about making sure you're getting the higher compensation you should be in our challenging career?

You're in the right place to get all your questions answered about travel nurse pay.

I'm a travel nurse, and I've been collecting this pay data since 2019 - first for my own job search, now for yours. 👩‍💻

Welcome to our interactive pay explorer - with updates every month!

How Much Do Travel Nurses Make?

The salary of a travel nurse isn't one number - and a single national average obscures the 2 things that move your pay the most.

Travel RNs average $2,180 a week nationally. Your own pay range will run wider than that in both directions:

• By state - from about $1,869 a week in Texas up to $2,568 in Alaska
• By specialty - from about $2,039 in Med-Surg up to $2,541 in Cardiovascular OR

So what you work and where you work it swing your weekly pay by roughly $500 to $700. Everything below is about finding where you land in that range.

For the deep dive on the averages themselves, here's my full guide on how much travel nurses make.

Average Travel Nurse Salary

The average travel nurse salary has been higher than the median staff nurse salary every single month I've tracked it. This is the classic travel nurse salary vs regular nurse question, so let's put a number on it.

The averages below run across all specialties and locations nationwide, on the "last 12 months" view.

Average Travel Nurse Salary vs Staff Nurse Salary

Travel RNs on average make about $60.57 per hour, $2,180 in weekly pay, $9,448 in monthly income, or $113,379 a year gross, according to pay package data aggregated by StellarNurse.com - averaged across the last 12 months of RN pay packages.

The median for staff RNs in the U.S. is $46.90 an hour, per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for registered nurses (May 2025, their most recent release). Everything in that column is built off $46.90 at the same 36-hour week travel contracts run on.

Quick note on the BLS number you'll see quoted everywhere: BLS publishes the staff median as $97,550 a year, but it gets there by multiplying $46.90 by a 40-hour week. Most of us bedside nurses work 36. Putting both nurses on 36 hours is the only way this comparison means anything.

You'll also still see $93,600 quoted all over the internet. That's BLS's previous release, from May 2024. Staff RN pay went up since then, and a lot of travel nursing sites haven't caught up.

That's a gap of about $25,600 a year gross at equal hours - and the difference in your pocket is usually bigger, because a large chunk of travel pay comes as tax-free stipends (more on that below).

Month to month, that same gap reads as $9,448 against $7,316 - about $2,132 more, every month, on the same 36 hours.

One thing to know about a travel nurse salary per month: it's a conversion, never a paycheck. Travel pay lands weekly, and 4 weekly checks don't make a month - so some months bring you 4 and some bring 5.

One honest caveat: the travel column assumes you work all 52 weeks. Most travelers take breaks between 13-week contracts, and those weeks are unpaid, while a staff nurse's PTO isn't.

A realistic travel year lands closer to $104,700 at 48 weeks worked. That's still about $16,900 over a staff nurse working the whole year.

One note on scope. Every figure I quote in this guide is travel RN pay only, while the pay explorer above spans Allied Health, Therapy and LPN/LVN too.

That's why its nationwide numbers sit a little under the RN figures in the text. Filter it to your own specialty and you're comparing apples to apples. 🍎

Travel Nurse Salary Trends: 2 Views, Last 12 Months or Back to 2019

We've tracked travel nurse pay packages continuously since September 2019 - more than 10 million jobs analyzed, every one standardized so you can compare them fairly.

Every chart and table in this guide has 2 settings. Look for the toggle in the top right corner of any graph:

• "Last 12 months" - the default. This is the current market: what to expect on the contract you're looking at this week.
• "Since 2019" - the full history, pandemic crisis rates included. This is the long arc: how today's rate stacks up against 2019, 2022, and everything between.

So if a number on this page looks higher than what you're being offered, check which view you're on. The all-time averages fold the 2022 spike into the math, and nobody's paying those rates now.

Both views are built the same way: objective pay insights on the travel RN job market, straight from what agencies actually advertised.

Travel Nurse Salary Now vs. Before the Pandemic

This is what the "Since 2019" setting is for. Flip any chart on this page over to it and you can answer something the 12-month view can't on its own:

How does pay today compare to before the pandemic started?

That's 83 straight months of pay packages behind it. Here's the whole arc in 3 numbers - weekly averages, all standardized to a 36-hour contract:

That bottom row is the same $2,180 average from the table above. Here's the road it took to get there.

Travel pay didn't fall back to where it started when crisis rates ended. It settled about 28% above the pre-pandemic average.

That 28% sounds better than it spends, though. Consumer prices rose about 30% over the same stretch, according to the BLS Consumer Price Index.

So today's average package buys a little less than a 2019 package did. The raise didn't quite keep up with what everything costs now.

Keep that in your back pocket when a recruiter tells you rates are way up from a few years ago. On paper, they are.

Here's the part that surprised me when I ran it. Line the travel premium up against staff pay at each end and it's actually shrunk:

• Late 2019 - travel $47.39/hr vs staff $35.24/hr = 34.5% more
• Right now - travel $60.57/hr vs staff $46.90/hr = 29% more

Staff RN wages climbed 33% over those years. Travel pay climbed 28%.

So staff nurses gained ground. Their pay beat inflation over the stretch; ours didn't quite. That's genuinely good news for the nurses holding those units together, and it's worth acknowledging.

Travel still pays more, and by a wide margin. But the gap is narrower than it was before the pandemic - so if anyone tells you travel nursing has been pulling away from staff pay, they have it backwards.

Prior to the pandemic I worked in Tacoma, WA for $2,052/week - slightly above average rates for that time. By chance, I began my indefinite break from bedside in November 2019 to put my energy into building StellarNurse for nurses like you & me.

When covid hit, my specialty L&D wasn't the highest demand - that was ICU. Even so, I remember receiving offers for $3,500/week & sometimes up to $4,000/week in Tacoma & Seattle between Nov 2021-Jan 2022.

I had whiplash when rates dropped all the way back down to $2,300 between Jul-Oct 2024 for L&D in Tacoma & Seattle. WTF?!

Trying to keep up with the volatility of the travel nursing job market felt like holding onto a bucking bronco: Only possible for short periods requiring frequent breaks to catch up with the lunacy. 🏇🐎

Watching our rates go sky-high for "essential" services all the way back down due to "normalizing" was a gut-punch. Especially with post-pandemic inflation. It's hard to understand and demoralizing.

Here's the part that makes it worse, which nobody in this industry walks you through. A drop is always smaller on paper than the climb it takes to undo it.

Same $1,200 either way. It's just a smaller slice of a big number and a bigger slice of a small one.

So undoing a 34% cut takes a 52% raise. The climb back is always steeper than the fall - that's why 2022 rates aren't returning on any timeline worth waiting for.

The bad news is the elevated pay rates that actually felt like accurate reflections of the high-demand and high-risk environments we nurses put ourselves in to go to work every day are done.

There's good news too, though. The downward trend is actually over.

Travel Nurse Pay Rates Stopped Falling in 2024

The post-pandemic correction is over.

Monthly averages bottomed out around $2,120 in July 2024, then drifted back up. For the past 12 months they've held in a tight band between $2,166 and $2,198 a week.

That's a market moving sideways with a slight upward tilt - not one still sliding.

Which means a lowball offer today isn't "rates coming down." It's just a lowball offer, and you should keep looking.

So don't wait. Know what your specialty and your city pay this month, and negotiate against that - not against a number the market would need a 52% swing to reach.

Why Do Travel Nurses Make So Much?

In short, high demand = higher compensation.

We're all aware healthcare facilities nationwide are experiencing a nursing retention gap. The hospital industry in particular is failing to retain registered nurses in full-time positions with the unsafe and unsustainable working conditions nurses are expected to work in.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 189,100 openings for registered nurses each year, on average, through 2034 - with RN employment growing 5% over the decade, faster than the average for all occupations.

With our high-demand nursing skills and high-risk working conditions, we deserve premium pay.

I served active duty military, so I know that the military pays more when members take on hazardous duties, called "hazard pay". Nursing earns this same bump in pay as America's most dangerous profession. Frankly we deserve even more.

As National Nurses United rightfully states, nurses are regularly put in dangerous working conditions including:

• Intentional low RN staffing levels imposed by hospital managers
• Inadequate occupational health and safety protections
• Increasing levels of violence in the workplace
• Insufficient stock of critical medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE)

We travel nurses earn our more competitive wages by having the adaptable skills necessary to fill critical staffing needs and provide meaningful patient care in a pinch with minimal to zero orientation and staffing support.

These critical needs are often on less desirable shifts, so preparing yourself to work night shift would open up more travel nurse job possibilities.

That's also why the barrier to entry sits where it does - facilities are paying for someone who can walk on and function. If you're still working toward that, here's how to become a travel nurse and how much experience you need before you start.

Healthcare facilities entice travel nurses with more competitive wages due to the extra hardships we take on with the lack of job stability while searching for new jobs every 13 weeks. There's also the lack of a consistent job benefits package and the inconveniences of travel costs and time.

Travel Nurse Pay Breakdown

Your offer lands as 4 numbers on 4 different clocks - so much per hour, so much a week for meals, so much a month for housing, a one-time travel check. Not one of them is what shows up in your weekly paycheck.

It's confusing! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Travel nurses get paid weekly, as W2 employees of the agency rather than the hospital. Most contracts are for hospital inpatient units, on the same standard frame:

• 12 hours/shift
• 3 shifts/week
• 36 hours/week
• 13 weeks total
• 468 work hours total per contract

Our interactive pay explorer above standardizes all travel nurse wage data around that 36-hour week.

Travel Nurse Pay Package Breakdown Example

Here's a Medical-Surgical offer - $30 base rate, $2,765 monthly housing, $400 weekly M&IE, $780 one-time travel - with every piece put on the same clock:

Watch the 2 totals. The $2,118 is what the agency advertises, because a one-time travel check never shows up in a weekly quote. Spread that $780 across your 468 contract hours and your blended rate is $60.50, not $58.83.

Now the part that matters more. Only the $1,080 base gets taxed - the other $1,098 a week, just over half the package, comes to you tax-free, as long as you keep a genuine tax home.

That split is the whole story of travel pay, and there's more to it than fits on this page. Where the money starts (the bill rate the hospital pays your agency), why a rock-bottom taxable base costs you more than it looks like, and what you actually clear after taxes - it's all in my full travel nurse pay breakdown.

I understand how confusing a pay package can be.

My first contract - heck my first paycheck! - slapped me in the face with hidden costs: I had parking fees deducted as well as money taken out for a 401k I didn't realize was initiating.

This turned out to be a misunderstanding on my part and a miscommunication from my recruiter.

Luckily, this was all fixed for me in a matter of days thanks to my responsive recruiter and unit manager. I got my parking fees reimbursed, and decided to continue my retirement investing.

But I quickly learned to triple-check my contract, and to ask about parking fees and retirement fund investing before signing.

Read my contract checklist so you won't make the same mistake I did!

Highest Paying States for Travel Nurses

Which states are really worth the higher cost license fees? Our map shows the highest paying states for travel nurses over the past 12 months.

Toggle it to "Since 2019" for the all-time state averages, crisis rate fluctuations included.

For more specific travel nurse salary by state, see our table below with detailed pay trends and job availability.

We've included the standard deviation. This shows you how 68% of pay offers spread above and below the average travel RN rates. Picture a bell curve.

For example, across our full history since 2019, 68% of California travel RN salaries fall within $2,631.07 +/- $714.68 - a pay range of $1,916.39 to $3,345.75.

That spread is the whole point. Two nurses working the same state in the same year can be $1,400 a week apart, and the average alone never shows you that.

The 'job count' column tells you how many contracts each state posted over the period you're viewing. Pay and volume are 2 different questions, and you want the answer to both.

Here's how travel nurse salary compares across a few of the most popular states, using RN averages from the last 12 months:

• California - the highest travel nurse salary of any high-volume state at about $2,541 a week, and the most contracts in the country at 57,352 posted over the last 12 months
• New York - about $2,380 a week, second only to California on volume with 51,972 contracts posted
• Texas - around $1,869 a week across 40,592 contracts, so steady work at a rate well below the top-paying states
• Florida - about $1,948 a week, and a thinner market than its size suggests at 18,982 contracts

California wins both - top pay and the most contracts. That's rare. Usually you're trading one for the other.

Texas and Florida are that trade-off in action. Texas posts more than twice Florida's contract volume, but Florida pays about $79 a week more - so which one wins depends on whether you need options or you need the rate.

Alaska actually posts the highest average of any state at $2,568 a week, but on just 4,837 contracts in 12 months. Excellent rate, far fewer shots at it.

I worked in Washington State (WA) before they joined the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC). So I went through all the extra steps to obtain my 'RN license by endorsement' there, including:

• the application fees ($120)
• background check & fingerprinting ($49.25)
• Total cost? ~ $170 total cost

Processing took about 3-6 weeks, but I received a temporary RN license pretty quick that I could practice on while I waited for my permanent license to come through.

I made $19/hour more in Tacoma, WA than I did in Kansas City, KS - my tax home. That's 50% more! Almost $8,900 more for my 13 weeks.

With that pay bump, my WA license was well worth the hassle & extra fees. Yes, the cost of living is higher, but the income tax rate is 0 in WA, so you only pay your normal tax home rate. Plus you get mandatory breaks every 4 hours! Keep that info in your back pocket. 🌲

I enjoyed the experience and the pay so much in WA that I returned for a second contract.

I also obtained my Hawaii license, but didn't end up working there - yet. So I let that go rather than pay renewal fees - which are on the high-end compared to other states.

But I still definitely recommend stacking a few state RN licenses to give yourself more options, and if you're not living in a compact state, you'll need to anyway.

Travel Nurse Salary by State: Pay and Job Counts

Every state, sorted by average weekly pay, with the contract volume next to it and the standard deviation so you can see the spread behind each average.

Curious what the market looked like pre-COVID19?

Below is a compilation of the states that offered the higher pay from September 2019 - March 2020. Compare this list to our above map and table to see what difference crisis rates made.

Top 5 Highest Paying States for Travel Nurses (Pre - Covid19)

1. California Consistently has the best pay and the most jobs by a long shot. Both inside and outside of the pandemic.
2. New Jersey Solid opportunities for both pay and job availability.
3. Washington D.C. Great income, but fewer job openings.
4. Alaska Decent pay and lots of jobs, despite reputation for low rates. Current rates lower than pre-covid19.
5. Connecticut Regularly pays above average with frequent job openings.

Where Your Travel Nurse Salary Goes Furthest

The states at the top of the pay charts are mostly the expensive ones. So a bigger weekly number doesn't automatically leave you with more money at the end of the month.

One thing to get straight before we compare, because most "cost of living adjusted" nurse pay rankings get this wrong.

Part of your pay is already adjusted for where you live. Your housing and M&IE (meals and incidental expenses) stipends are set by location, off GSA per diem rates - higher in expensive cities, lower in cheap ones.

So when a ranking divides your whole travel package by a cost of living index, it's docking you for expensive housing twice: once in the stipend that already accounts for it, then again in the math.

That's what makes California look far worse than it actually is.

What you can do instead is look for the states clearing both bars at once: paying above the national travel average and costing below the national average to live in.

Only 3 states with serious contract volume pull it off.

Quick read on the cost of living index: 100 is the national average, and lower means cheaper. Iowa's 88.6 runs about 11% below average, while California's 140.5 sits about 40% above it.

• Wisconsin - $2,286 a week across 34,502 contracts, at a cost index of 97.4
• Illinois - $2,273 a week across 34,252 contracts, at 95.1
• Iowa - $2,200 a week across 25,768 contracts, at 88.6

Every one of those pays above the $2,180 national travel RN average while costing less than average to live in. That's 2 plain facts stacked, no adjustment math required.

Iowa is the standout on housing specifically, at an index of 75.6 - roughly 24% below the national average. A standard housing stipend stretches a lot further there.

You don't have to hunt for these contracts state by state, either.

StellarNurse job search has a cost of living filter - set it to low, and you'll see the best-paying contracts in those places in front of you.

Now the other direction. The top-paying states carry housing costs your stipend has to work hard to cover:

• Massachusetts - housing index 217.5, more than double the national average
• California - 189.5
• New York - 172.3

None of that is a reason to skip them. California still leads the country on pay and on contract volume, and plenty of us have done very well out there.

It's a reason to check GSA's per diem rates for your specific city before you sign, so you know whether the stipend covers a place you'd actually want to come home to.

Texas is worth naming as the reverse case. It's cheap to live in at 90.7, but it pays $1,869 a week - well below the national average. A low cost of living doesn't do much for you when the rate is low too.

Highest Travel Nurse Salaries by Metropolitan Area

Metro pay swings harder than state pay does. Two cities in the same state can sit hundreds of dollars a week apart, so the metro number is the one to check before you spend money on a license.

Keep one number in your head as you read down these tables: the national travel RN average is $2,180 a week. That's the bar every metro below is clearing or missing.

Get even more location-specific data using our interactive pay explorer.

Highest paying metro areas

RN averages from the last 12 months, limited to metros that posted at least 2,000 contracts - enough volume that the average holds up.

San Jose leads at roughly 38% above the national average. California takes 5 of those 9 spots, which is why a California license keeps paying for itself.

Smaller markets can beat all of them on rate - Juneau, AK averages $2,767 and Laramie, WY $2,706. But they post only a few hundred contracts a year, so the pay is there and the timing almost never is.

Metro areas with the most travel nurse jobs

The metros that posted the most RN contracts over the last 12 months, and what each one paid against that $2,180 national average.

Boston wins on both counts. It posted more RN contracts than any metro in the country and still pays about 13% above the national average.

New York City is the other market that does both - 4th on volume with 12,344 contracts, and 5th on pay nationally at $2,535 a week.

Atlanta and Dallas are the opposite trade. Plenty of work, but both sit 13-15% below the national average, so volume on its own isn't worth relocating for.

Worth noticing that 6 of those 10 clear the $2,180 national average. High volume and good pay aren't the either/or they're often made out to be.

Pro tip: a California license is still the strongest single investment for high pay. But Massachusetts is the one nobody talks about - Boston, Pittsfield and Barnstable all clear $2,450 a week with the volume to back it up.

Find open contracts in any of these metros and we'll show you the best-paying ones for your specialty first.

Travel Nurse Salary by Specialty

Feast your eyes on the largest travel nursing specialty comparison available including more than 75 bedside RN specialties. Our interactive table shows nationwide pay averages including standard deviation for you to get an accurate overview of what each specialty averages.

Here's how it shakes out across the specialties with steady travel volume, using RN averages from the last 12 months:

• Cardiovascular OR pays the most at about $2,541 a week, across 16,381 contracts
• Cardiac Cath Lab is the one to notice - $2,509 a week across 30,854 contracts, so it pays within $32 of the top and posts real volume
• Interventional Radiology pays $2,520 but posted only 9,359 contracts, so the money is there and the openings mostly aren't
• L&D is the rare specialty that wins both - roughly $2,418 a week across 61,799 contracts, top 5 on pay and top 6 on volume
• ED and ICU post the most work at 96,005 and 71,070 contracts, paying about $2,130 and $2,158 a week
• Med-Surg is the widest doorway in at 86,788 contracts, and the lowest paid of the common specialties at about $2,039 a week

That's a $502 a week gap between Med-Surg and Cardiovascular OR - close to $6,500 over a single 13-week contract.

Everything above is a 12-month average, so it tells you which specialties pay well year in and year out. For what's paying on contracts open today, with the number of openings beside each specialty, see what's paying on the board right now.

I have never regretted choosing L&D.

Originally I landed on my decision based on a dynamic work environment - every shift and every delivery is different!

Plus I aspired to the level of autonomy I saw labor nurses exerting in my nursing school clinicals. I saw them laboring the patients independently and making the call when and if the doctor was needed.

I can now verify: It really does make you feel powerful making those decisions between you and your patient, often without a doctor weighing in.

The cherry on top is that L&D gives me the pick of the litter when it comes to job choice. 🍒

High volume and high pay is my leverage. I had a nurse manager MAKE A JOB POSITION for me so I could work on their unit - that's how desperately they want more L&D nurses.

I'm able to line up multiple job offers at once, so I can negotiate, and have employers compete for me.

The flip side of the exciting and fulfilling work is it's exhausting - straight-up. Tiring both mentally & physically. But so is most of nursing, so you just need to decide what kind of tired you can tolerate and try to make the pay worth it.

The table is bedside RN contracts only. Allied, LPN/LVN and Therapy are out, and so are management and advanced-practice roles like Nurse Manager and CRNA.

Those pay on a different scale, and leaving them in would put a job you're not applying for at the top of a ranking you're reading to plan your next contract.

Still watch the job count column. Nothing here posts fewer than about 100 contracts a year, but 100 a year and 96,000 a year are very different odds of landing one.

For a different view, we've got an interactive bubble chart plotting travel nurse salary by specialty against job availability. Hover over the bubbles to identify the specialties.

Not all nursing specialties have a regular high need for travel nurses. For example, RN's in Electrophysiology Lab (EP Lab) regularly have higher pay offerings, but don't have the plentiful job options that ICU or L&D nurses have.

Pro tip: If you aspire to work consistently as a travel nurse, gain experience in a specialty with higher job availability.

I repeat: Higher demand = Higher compensation.

How To Use This Data To Get a Better Rate

All the numbers above are only worth something if they change what you say to a recruiter. We started StellarNurse to help you do exactly that.

The short version, after 5+ years analyzing the market:

• Research the job market before you talk to agencies
• Work with 2-5 agencies so you can compare contracts for the same job
• Use your blended rate to size up offers fast

That first one is the whole game: zoom out across the market before anyone zooms you in on 1 contract. I break the method down in the travel nursing guide.

Keep all your certifications & requirements organized in a digital folder so you can apply quickly when a great job opportunity comes up. The best pay is competitive and often needs someone fast.

For the full playbook, see how to find and land the best-paying contracts. Once you have an offer on the table, negotiate your travel nurse pay to push it higher.

How To Find The Best Paying Travel Nurse Agencies

You should work with 2-5 travel nurse agencies so you can compare what each one pays for the same contract.

But which travel nurse companies?

With more than 500 agencies posting travel nursing jobs daily it’s overwhelming to find which ones might be the best travel nurse companies for you. Here's my guide to choosing a travel nurse agency if you want the longer version.

After analyzing 10 million jobs over the past 5+ years, we’ve organized our data to help you make informed decisions on which agencies to contact first.

Find the 2-5 best paying travel nurse agencies for your specialty and preferred locations. Use the filters to see which agencies have the most jobs available.

Agency averages spread wider than most nurses expect. The same contract can pay meaningfully different rates depending on which agency submits you - which is the entire reason to keep more than 1 recruiter in your corner.

I worked with multiple agencies to find an L&D job in the Kansas City area, for a local contract.

I ended up with two offers in hand: Kansas City vs Lawrence, KS - my hometown. But Lawrence was offering less, $6/hour less, to be exact.

I made my Kansas City agency aware I had multiple offers on the table, and negotiated myself extra perks. Better overtime rates and free parking, without taking cuts from my package.

I chose Kansas City. I commuted an extra 30 minutes to work but it was a bigger hospital and I pocketed almost $3,000 more on my 13-week contract. Plus my patient population was more diverse and higher acuity, which is my jam.

Working with multiple agencies always pays. Loyalty doesn't. 🤑

Two things to know before you read this table as a ranking.

An agency's average reflects the mix of jobs it fills. A company loaded with California ICU contracts will average higher than one filling Med-Surg jobs in lower-paying states, without being one dollar more generous to you.

The toggle changes this table like every other one here. The "Since 2019" view folds in the crisis-rate years, when some agencies were posting volume they don't post today.

So filter to your specialty and your states, on the "Last 12 months" view. That's the only comparison that tells you anything about the offer you'll actually get.

Refer back to our interactive pay explorer for in-depth pay trends on the best travel nursing agencies for your specialty and locations.

Pay is only 1 of 4 things to check, though. The others are

• whether they actually have jobs in your specialty and states
• what their benefits cost and when they start
• how fast a recruiter answers you before you've signed anything

That vetting is its own job, so I put it all in one place: how to choose a travel nurse agency covers the questions to ask on a first call, the red flags worth walking away from, where to find reviews nurses actually wrote, and how to keep your phone from ringing off the hook once 5 agencies have your number.

Bonus tip: you can message recruiters AND block spam right here at StellarNurse. Your private email is free with your profile, and you can switch it off any time.

Is Travel Nursing Worth It?

For most nurses, financially - yes. Travel pay runs well above staff pay (the numbers above show by how much), and the upside isn't only money: a sweeping MIT Sloan study found travel nurses report higher job satisfaction, less workplace stress, and more employer support than permanent staff.

It isn't the right fit for everyone, though - the trade-offs are legit. But the standard contract is only 13 weeks, so I vote you give it a try and decide for yourself. The great thing about nursing is you can always go back to staff if travel isn't for you.

For the full financial and lifestyle picture, see is travel nursing worth it and the pros and cons of travel nursing.

Not a nurse yet, or not there on experience? These pay numbers are still your target - how long it takes to become a travel nurse maps the whole clock, including the licensing and placement stages that nobody counts.

Our Data Sources

Every pay figure on this page comes from real, publicly posted travel nurse job listings - the same contracts you'd see on agency websites and Google job listings. We don't estimate or model pay; we aggregate what agencies actually advertise.

Since September 2019, we've collected and standardized more than 10 million pay packages. To compare them fairly, we convert every offer to a blended weekly rate built on the standard 36-hour contract, so a stipend-heavy package and a base-rate-heavy one line up side by side.

We deduplicate too. The same contract often gets posted by several agencies at once, so we group those listings and count the job once - otherwise the most heavily advertised contracts would pull the averages around behind the scenes.

That grouping does double duty: it's also what lets us show you what different agencies are paying for the very same job.

We run a sanity range on top of that. Any listing under $200 a week or over $15,000 gets dropped from the specialty and state figures before we average anything.

Neither of those is a contract anyone posted. They're data entry slips - usually an hourly rate typed into the weekly field, or a single per diem shift logged as a full week.

We report each average alongside its standard deviation, so you can see the real spread of offers instead of a single headline number. We also drop specialties with very low job counts and non-bedside supervisory roles, which keeps the rankings tied to jobs you can actually land.

Every pay figure in this article is RN pay only. Our full database also covers Allied Health, Therapy, LPN/LVN, and CNA contracts, and those pay less than RN work on average - so mixing them in would drag the "travel nurse salary" number below what an RN actually sees.

Our staff nurse comparison comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics median of $46.90/hour (May 2025, their latest release), and we put staff and travel nurses on the same 36-hour week. BLS's headline $97,550 a year is that same $46.90 stretched over 40 hours, which isn't the schedule most of us work.

The data refreshes every month, so these figures track the current market, not last year's rates.

One thing I have to say plainly: this guide is information, not tax or financial advice.

I can tell you what contracts are paying and how packages are built, because that's what the data shows. But whether you qualify for tax-free stipends depends on your own tax home, and that's worth an hour with a tax professional who knows travel healthcare. My travel nurse taxes guide walks through what a tax home actually requires before you get there.

Get that part right and the stipends are yours to keep.

Thanks for Reading 🤗

So here's the short version. Travel RNs average $2,180 a week - a $60.57 blended hourly rate - which lands about 29% above the staff RN median at the same 36 hours.

That premium is there, but it's narrowing: it was 34.5% back in 2019. The market also stopped sliding in 2024, so a lowball offer today isn't "rates coming down," it's just a lowball offer.

Your number won't be the average, though. Your specialty and your state move it more than anything else - which is exactly what the pay explorer up top is for.

Thanks for reading my Ultimate Travel Nurse Salary Guide - the article that started it all!

I began aggregating travel nurse salaries back in 2019 to help my own travel nursing job search.

Now I've compiled all these juicy travel nurse pay insights to help you

• Make pay comparisons easily
• Find the best deals fast
• Make objective decisions based on real data

Since 2019, I've been on a mission to make travel nursing money more transparent for us. And to bring you objective pay insights nobody else wants to show you!

Stick around! Next you should check out:

• Find your Best Travel Nursing Job Deals
• How much do Travel Nurses make?
• How to Become a Travel Nurse
• Block your Travel Nursing Job Spam Calls

Reach out to me ➡️ Veronica - I'm a travel nurse too and I love to chat about all things travel nursing. 💕

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