How Much Do Travel Nurses Make (2026 Data)

Travel nurse job listings in the United States offer an average of $2,202¹ a week, a gross package of taxable hourly pay plus housing and meal stipends, across 274,776 active listings in the week to September 24, 2026. That is 13%² above the average registered nurse's weekly base wage of $1,950 (May 2025), and most of the gap is stipend money, which stays tax-free only for a nurse who keeps a tax home.³ The same kind of contract was posted at $3,288 a week in January 2022, at the peak of pandemic demand.¹ No official statistic isolates travel nurses, so this page sets the listings beside official wages, hospital costs and the accounts of staffing agencies.⁴

The package changes with place and specialty: Alaska listings average $2,718 a week and Mississippi's $1,839⁵, while in California, where registered nurses have the highest mean base wage of any state, the posted travel package is below the average RN base wage.⁶ At the peak, hospitals were charged 213% more per hour for travel nurses than in January 2019.⁷ The sections below cover weekly, yearly and hourly pay, stipends and tax, every state, 12 nursing specialties and 17 other travel jobs, the boom and bust of 2021-2023, and demand to 2035.

How much travel nurses make a week

The typical travel RN listing offers a median of $2,155¹ a week before tax, and the mean listing $2,202. Both are gross weekly packages as agencies post them: a taxable hourly base, housing and meal stipends and any posted bonus. They are offers for a contract rather than paychecks, and the count is of listings, not nurses, since several agencies can post the same contract.¹

The spread is narrow compared with registered nurse pay. A listing at the 10th percentile offers $1,756 a week and one at the 90th percentile $2,725, so the threshold of the top tenth is 1.55² times the ceiling of the bottom tenth. The middle half of listings falls between $1,946 and $2,400 a week.¹

How much the average travel nurse makes

The mean listing, $2,201.79¹ a week, sits $47² above the median because a thin tail of high offers pulls it up: the top listing that week offered $13,235 and the lowest $462.92.¹ Niche roles post the most, such as pediatric infusion at $3,931 a week and ECMO coordinator at $3,723, but on few listings. Measured on listings, the travel nurse median salary is $2,155 a week, which would be $112,060² over 52 paid weeks, an upper bound that assumes a contract in every week of the year.

Posted pay today is far below its pandemic peak. The monthly mean rose from $2,091 a week in June 2021 to $3,288¹ in January 2022, 57%² higher in seven months, while the median peaked at $3,298 in the same month; both then fell through 2022 and 2023. Since January 2024 it has stayed between $2,251 and $2,419, and in September 2026 it stood at $2,273, 31%² below the peak.¹ The monthly series aggregates the same listings differently from the 7-day snapshot, so September's $2,273 and the snapshot's $2,202 differ by $71².

How much a travel nurse makes a year

Travel contracts are quoted by the week, so a yearly figure depends on how many weeks a nurse works. At the average posted rate of $2,202 a week, 52 weeks of work would pay $114,504² before tax. That is an upper bound that assumes no weeks off between contracts, and no source counts the weeks travel nurses actually work in a year.¹

The official yardstick is base pay. Registered nurses employed by temporary help agencies, the industry that holds most agency nurses, travel and local alike, earned a mean of $96,070⁴ a year in May 2025 on a standard 2,080-hour year, before any stipend; the median was $89,800. All registered nurses averaged $101,420 and had a median of $97,550.⁸

How much a travel nurse makes a month

Spread over 12 months, 52 weeks at the average posted rate come to $9,542² a month before tax. The official mean base wage of agency-employed registered nurses works out at $8,006² a month, without stipends, overtime or bonuses, which the official wage figures leave out.⁴

How much travel nurses make an hour

Listings quote a weekly package, and the stipend part is not an hourly wage. The hourly base pay of agency-employed registered nurses averaged $46.19⁴ in May 2025, $2.57² below the $48.76 mean for all registered nurses, or about 5%² less.⁸ It was not always so: in 2022, 2023 and 2024 agency nurses' mean base wage was above the all-RN mean, by 17%² in 2023, at $52.92 an hour against $45.42.⁴

The rise and fall tracks demand for agency staff. Agency nurses' mean base wage climbed 46%² from 2020 to 2023 and then slipped to $46.19 by 2025.⁴ These estimates rest on a rolling three-year sample of employers and are not designed for year-to-year comparison, so single-year moves are rough.⁸

How much travel nurses make per assignment

A travel assignment often runs 13 weeks.¹⁰ At the average posted rate, one such contract pays $28,623² before tax. The base-pay part of that sum is always taxed as wages; the housing and meal stipends inside it are tax-free only under the rules set out further down.³ At the median listing, $2,155 a week, the same contract comes to $28,015².

How often travel nurses travel

No survey counts moves per nurse. With contracts that often last 13 weeks, a nurse who works them back to back changes assignment up to 4² times a year.¹⁰ An assignment expected to last more than a year changes the tax picture, because the work location then becomes the nurse's tax home.³

The number of agency-employed nurses shows how the market grew and shrank. Temporary help agencies employed 43,160 registered nurses in May 2020 and 105,740⁴ at the 2024 peak, 2.45² times as many. By May 2025 the count had fallen 20%² to 84,640, still 1.96² times the 2020 level and 2.5%² of all registered nurse jobs.

How travel listings compare with the average RN's base wage

Set against the mean weekly base wage of all registered nurses, $1,950 in May 2025 ($101,420 divided by 52), the average travel listing of September 2026 offers $251² a week more, 13% above.⁸ The two figures measure different things at different dates: the listing is a posted package that includes stipends, the wage is base pay only, and all registered nurses include agency nurses themselves. Against the median weekly wage of $1,876² the gap is wider.

What registered nurses earn

All registered nurses' pay has risen for more than a decade. The median annual wage rose from $65,950 in May 2011 to $97,550⁸ in May 2025, 48%² higher, and the mean from $69,110 to $101,420, up 47%².⁹

After inflation the gain is small. In 2025 dollars the median was $94,391 in 2011 and $97,550 in 2025, a real rise of about 3%²; it dipped to $89,348² in 2022, when prices rose faster than nurses' base wages.¹¹ Each year's median is multiplied by the 2025 consumer price index, 321.943, and divided by that year's index. The real low of 2022 came in the same year that posted travel pay peaked, and when agency nurses' mean base wage jumped from $37.29 to $50.55⁴ an hour: the premium went to agency-employed nurses, while the median registered nurse lost ground to prices.

Registered nurse pay is spread much more widely than travel offers. In May 2025 the bottom tenth of registered nurses earned $68,940 a year or less and the top tenth at least $137,470⁸, about 2² times as much. The middle half earned between $80,330 and $112,350.⁸

The workforce keeps growing. There were 3,379,720 registered nurse jobs in May 2025, 24%² more than the 2,724,570 of May 2011, and every release since 2013 has been higher than the one before.⁹

Where a nurse works matters more than whether the nurse came through an agency. Across ten industries that employ many registered nurses, the federal executive branch paid the highest mean, $129,260⁴ a year, and outpatient care centers $112,690; temporary help services paid $96,070, below general hospitals' $104,360 and above nursing care facilities' $89,330.⁴ Specialty hospitals paid $107,050, home health care services $93,580 and offices of physicians $90,670. Employment services, at $95,660, contains temporary help services, so the two are never added together.

Most registered nurses work in private industry: 84%² of jobs, with a mean of $100,570. Federal government nurses have the highest mean, $129,220¹², and local government nurses the lowest, $94,460.¹² State government employs 157,270 registered nurses at a mean of $111,260, and the four groups add up to all 3,379,720 jobs.

Base pay, stipends and the tax home

A weekly package is two different kinds of money: wages the IRS always taxes, and stipends it taxes only sometimes. In 2022 the nurse's hourly pay made up about 52%¹⁰ of the hourly bill rate hospitals paid agencies for travel nurses, and housing and meal reimbursement about 21%. The remaining 27%² covered payroll taxes, benefits, travel and the agency's overhead and earnings, a split that is not published. Housing and meal reimbursement was therefore about 29%² of the pay-plus-reimbursement part of 2022 bill rates.¹⁰

How much the travel nurse housing stipend is

What agencies pay in stipends appears in no official series. What the tax rules fix is the ceiling on the tax-free part: the federal per diem rate for the place of the assignment.³ In fiscal 2026 the standard rate, which applies wherever no local rate is listed, is $110¹³ a night for lodging and $68 a day for meals and incidental expenses. A 7-day week at the standard rate therefore allows up to $1,246² tax-free, of which $770² is lodging.¹³

The standard lodging rate rose from $83 a night in fiscal 2015 to $110 in fiscal 2025 and 2026, and the meals rate from $46 to $68 a day.¹⁴

Travel nurse stipend by state

Local rates are higher in expensive places. Averaged over the listed destinations in each state and weighted by the days each seasonal rate applies, the fiscal 2026 lodging-plus-meals rate runs from $325.73² a day in the District of Columbia to $182 in Arkansas; counties without a listed rate use the standard $178².¹³ These are ceilings for the tax-free part of a stipend, not what agencies pay: an allowance above the federal rate is taxable wages for the excess.³

Resort towns top the list of local rates. The highest seasonal lodging rate in fiscal 2026 is $483¹³ a night in Park City, Utah, followed by Nantucket at $471 and Martha's Vineyard at $462. New York City's peak rate is $342, which with $92 for meals allows up to $3,038² a week tax-free.¹³

How stipend limits are set

Employers can also use a simpler high-low method, with one daily rate for high-cost places and one for everywhere else. For fiscal 2026 these are $319¹⁵ a day and $225, unchanged from fiscal 2025 and up from $296 and $202 in fiscal 2022.¹⁶

When stipends are taxed

The rules behind the tax-free treatment are strict. A nurse's tax home is the regular place of business or, without one, the home where the nurse regularly lives; a nurse who fails that test is an itinerant whose tax home is wherever the work is, so every stipend is taxable.³ An assignment must be temporary, realistically expected to last a year or less; once it is expected to last longer, the work location becomes the tax home and living allowances count as income.

Travel nurse pay by state

The average RN's pay sets the local baseline. The mean hourly base wage of all registered nurses ranges from $72.25⁶ in California to $37.03 in Alabama, nearly twice as much; Hawaii ($59.78), Oregon ($59.20) and Washington ($58.43) come next after California.⁶

Posted travel pay is flatter than registered nurse pay. Listings average $2,718⁵ a week in Alaska and $1,839 in Mississippi, a gap of $878², so Alaska's listings offer 48%² more.⁵ Rhode Island ($2,685), California ($2,569) and Massachusetts ($2,552) follow Alaska; Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Utah sit just above Mississippi at the bottom.

Counting travel nursing jobs by state, Texas has the most active listings, 21,624, ahead of California (14,933), North Carolina (14,150) and Georgia (13,309).⁵ Listings are not nurses, and Indiana had only 2 in the week, too few for an average.

How much travel nurses make in California

California listings average $2,569⁵ a week, the third-highest of any state, but the state's registered nurses also have the highest mean base wage, $2,890² a week.⁶ The posted package there is 0.89² times the average RN weekly base wage: an average travel offer in California is below the average RN base wage there, even though part of the offer is stipend money.

The chart below divides each state's average listing by the local mean weekly base wage of all registered nurses. It compares offers with local base wages at two different dates; it is not a pay gap between two groups of nurses.

Texas has the most listings and one of the lowest averages, so the answer to how much travel nurses make in Texas is modest: $1,877 a week, just 1.02² times the local mean base wage.⁵ Florida pays a little more. Its listings, the best guide to how much a travel nurse makes in Florida, average $2,017 a week, 1.16² times the local base wage.

The ratio falls below 1 in four states, and Hawaii shows why. Registered nurses there have the second-highest mean base wage of any state, so how much travel nurses make in Hawaii, $2,260⁵ a week on average, is only 0.95² times the local base wage; Oregon (0.97) and Washington (0.98) are the other two besides California. The table gives every state's median, 10th and 90th percentile and listing count.

In the Northeast, New York listings average $2,439⁵ a week, which puts how much travel nurses make in New York at 1.12 times the local base wage. In the Southeast, the figure for how much travel nurses make in North Carolina is $2,026 a week on average, 1.16 times.

The premium is larger in the Midwest. Illinois offers average $2,322⁵ a week, 1.28 times the local wage, which is how much travel nurses make in Illinois before tax on a typical listing. In the Southwest, Arizona offers come to $2,197, and that is how much travel nurses make in Arizona on average, 1.15 times the local wage.

Oklahoma is typical of the lower-wage states. On posted offers, how much travel nurses make in Oklahoma comes to $2,105⁵ a week, 1.29 times the local base wage. The widest ratios are in states with modest RN wages, led by South Dakota at 1.68, North Dakota at 1.49 and Iowa at 1.44.⁵ Alaska's travel listings pay 48% more than Mississippi's, while registered nurses in California earn nearly twice as much an hour as registered nurses in Alabama.⁶

Registered nurse pay by metro area

The metro pattern is starker. Of the 25 highest-paying metro areas for registered nurses, 22 are in California, led by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at $93.73²⁰ an hour; the other three are Kahului-Wailuku in Hawaii, Bend in Oregon and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue in Washington.²⁰

At the other end, 6 of the 25 lowest-paying areas are in Puerto Rico, where Arecibo's mean is $19.05²⁰ an hour; outside Puerto Rico, Decatur and Dothan in Alabama are lowest at $33.91.²⁰ San Jose's mean is 4.9² times Arecibo's.

Travel nurse pay by specialty

Specialty moves posted pay by a few hundred dollars a week. Among 12 nursing specialties, pediatric intensive care (PICU) listings offer the most, $2,493²¹ a week, 13%² above the all-specialty mean, and labor and delivery listings $2,488.²¹ Medical-surgical listings, the most numerous at 66,218, offer the least, $2,129, so labor and delivery pays $359² a week more.

Intensive care sits at the average: across 46,216 listings, how much an ICU travel nurse makes comes to $2,199²¹ a week, almost exactly the all-specialty mean. Emergency department listings average $2,177 and telemetry $2,175.

Newborn intensive care pays a little more. On 6,818 listings, how much a travel NICU nurse makes averages $2,290²¹ a week. Children's wards pay more still: $2,426 a week is how much travel pediatric nurses make on the average pediatrics listing.

Labor and delivery is the other top payer. A nurse asking how much a labor and delivery travel nurse makes would see $2,488 a week, second of the 12 specialties.²¹ Operating room listings average $2,415 and oncology $2,334.

At the other end, $2,129 a week is how much a med/surg travel nurse makes on the average listing, the lowest of the 12 specialties.²¹ Psychiatric listings average $2,166 and stepdown $2,248.

Other travel healthcare jobs

Agencies place many other clinicians on the same kind of contract. Among 17 other travel job categories with at least 100 listings, interventional radiology technologists are offered the most, $2,966²² a week, and sterile processing technicians the least, $1,384.²² Registered nurses, at $2,202, sit in the middle: 10 of the 17 categories are offered more on average and 7 are offered less. As with nurses, these are gross weekly packages with stipends, posted for contracts of set length, not paychecks.

Imaging, surgery and the lab

Imaging pays well. Sonography listings average $2,451²² a week, a fair answer to how much travel ultrasound techs make before tax, while radiology listings, the closest match for how much travel radiology techs make, average $2,284. CT technologists average $2,598 and cath lab technologists $2,901.²²

MRI is near the top of imaging: $2,515 a week is how much travel MRI techs make on the average listing. Surgery pays less. Offers for how much a travel surgical tech makes average $1,916²², so surgical technologists are among the 7 categories offered less than the typical travel RN.

Sterile processing is at the bottom of the list: from 130 listings, how much travel sterile processing techs make averages $1,384 a week. Official base wages give only a rough guide to how much a travel MLT makes an hour: clinical laboratory technologists and technicians employed by temporary help agencies averaged $30.20⁴ an hour in May 2025, a group that combines technicians with technologists. Medical technologist listings average $1,788 a week.²²

Therapy

Physical and occupational therapy listings sit just above the RN average. Across 40,870 listings, $2,264²² a week is how much travel physical therapists make on average, and $2,256 is how much travel occupational therapists make.²² In official base wages, agency-employed physical therapists earn 17%² less than all physical therapists, $42.18 an hour against $50.62.⁴

Respiratory therapy pays less: the average offer for how much a travel respiratory therapist makes is $2,082²² a week. Speech-language pathologists average $2,272 and physical therapist assistants $1,560.

LPNs, CNAs, assistants and social workers

Official wages show how much a travel CNA makes in base pay only: nursing assistants employed by temporary help agencies averaged $23.59⁴ an hour in May 2025, 15%² more than all nursing assistants at $20.53; nursing assistant listings are too few to average. LPN and LVN listings average $1,487 a week, and agency-employed LPNs earn $36.57 an hour in base pay, 13%² more than all LPNs.⁴

In base wages, how much travel medical assistants make is close to the all-industry figure: $22.28⁴ an hour for agency-employed medical assistants against $22.17. As for how much travel phlebotomists make, agency-employed phlebotomists average $22.94 an hour against $21.88 for all phlebotomists.

In base pay, how much travel dental hygienists make is $44.39⁴ an hour for agency-employed hygienists, below the $47.59 all-industry mean. Social work is a smaller market: on 312 listings, how much travel social workers make averages $2,424 a week.²²

Nurse practitioners and PAs

Advanced-practice listings are too few to average, so official base wages give the answer. They put how much travel nurse practitioners make at $66.33⁴ an hour for agency-employed nurse practitioners, level with the $66.01 of all nurse practitioners, and how much travel PAs make at $77.79 an hour for agency-employed physician assistants, 15%² above the all-industry $67.92.⁴

How much flight nurses make

Flight nurses are not travel nurses, and no series isolates flight nurses. The nearest official figure covers registered nurses working for ambulance services (ground and air), the industry that includes air-ambulance operators: 5,420 jobs in May 2025, with a mean of $44.38⁴ an hour or $92,310 a year and a median of $85,460.⁴ Travel nurses need the same education and licensing as staff nurses¹⁰; as for how much school it takes to be a travel nurse, the typical entry-level education for registered nurses is a bachelor's degree.²³

The pandemic boom: hospital and nursing-home costs

The travel market of 2021 and 2022 was a hospital-cost story as much as a pay story. Contract and travel nurses' share of hospital nurse hours rose from 3.9%⁷ in January 2019 to 23.4% in January 2022, 6² times as much, and their median share of nurse labor spending from 4.7% in 2019 to 38.6% in January 2022, about 8 times. The hourly rates hospitals were charged for travel nurses rose 213%, and job postings for travel nurses were nearly 120% higher.⁷

The gap between billed rates and advertised pay rose from about 15% in 2019 to about 62% in January 2022, though the two come from different samples.⁷ At six hospitals studied in detail, the hourly cost of a supplemental nurse, what the hospital paid the agency, rose between 53%¹⁰ and 266% from 2019 to 2022, while the cost of a directly employed nurse, wages plus benefits and payroll taxes, rose 14% to 45%. In 2022 one hospital paid $150.00 an hour for supplemental nurses against $40.25 for its own.¹⁰ At another, the two costs were almost equal in 2019, $76.61 and $76.49 an hour; by 2022 the supplemental nurse cost $143.82 against $94.94.

Agency nurses also did more of the work. At one of the six hospitals, supplemental nurses provided 28%¹⁰ of registered nurse use in 2022, against 8% in 2019; at another, they rose from under 1% to 16%.¹⁰

Spending moved further than use. In 2022 the share of registered nurse spending that went to supplemental nurses was above their share of use at all six hospitals, because each supplemental hour cost more; at one hospital it reached 67%¹⁰ of spending.

California's short-term acute care hospitals show the statewide picture. Supplemental (registry) nursing staff, which counts registry RNs, LVNs and aides together, supplied 7%¹⁰ of nursing hours in fiscal 2022, up from 5% in fiscal 2019, while directly employed RNs supplied 72%.¹⁰

Their hourly cost rose 62%¹⁰, from $81.40 in fiscal 2019 to $131.50 in fiscal 2022, against 10% for directly employed RNs, from $58.70 to $64.70. By fiscal 2022, registry staff cost about twice as much an hour as directly employed RNs, 2.03² times.¹⁰

Hospital employment shifted too. Registered nurses working in hospital inpatient settings but employed by a staffing agency numbered 28,190 in 2017, 2% of the total, and 129,570¹⁰ in 2021, 10%, 4.6² times as many.¹⁰

Nursing homes paid a similar premium. Across 15,959 freestanding nursing homes in 2021, the median hourly cost of an agency RN, what the home paid the agency, was $64.19²⁴, 53%² more than the $41.99 wage-and-benefit cost of a directly employed RN.²⁴ For licensed practical nurses the agency cost was $52.42 against $32.29, 62%² more, and for nursing assistants $33.73 against $19.62, a premium of 72%².

Agency costs also rose faster over the four years. From 2017 to 2021 the median hourly cost of an agency RN rose 22.8%²⁴ and of an agency LPN 28.3%, against 18.1% and 19.8% for directly employed staff; for nursing assistants the rises were 34.9% for agency staff and 27.5% for direct staff, while nursing-home revenues rose 16.6% over the period.²⁴

Agency staff's share of nursing-home staffing hours was about 2% for each staff type in early 2017; by the end of 2021 it was 5.6%²⁴ for RNs, 9.4% for LPNs and 8.8% for nursing assistants.²⁴

Where the hospital's money goes: bill rates and agencies

Two listed US nurse staffing agencies publish the revenue behind these bills. Their figures measure what clients paid, not what nurses earned, but they show the size and the speed of the swing.²⁵ At the smaller of the two, revenue per full-time-equivalent contractor per day in nurse and allied staffing peaked at $565²⁶ in 2022 and fell to $346 in 2025, 39%² lower.²⁶

At the larger agency, revenue from travel nurse staffing rose from $1,230 million in 2020 to $2,913 million²⁵ in 2022, 2.37² times as much, and fell to $828 million in 2025, 72%² below the peak.²⁵

Its nurse and allied segment grew as a share of the company during the boom and shrank after it: 67%²⁵ of company revenue in 2018, 76% in 2022 and 60% in 2025.²⁵

Total company revenue shows the whole cycle: $2,393.7 million in 2020, $5,243.2 million²⁵ in 2022 and $2,730.4 million in 2025, after three straight years of decline.²⁵

Profits swung harder than revenue. Operating income peaked at $647.1 million²⁵ in 2022 and turned to losses of $102.7 million in 2024 and $55.5 million in 2025; net income went from $444.1 million to losses of $147.0 million and $95.7 million.²⁵

The smaller agency followed the same path. Its nurse and allied staffing revenue rose from $768.5 million in 2020 to $2,700.4 million²⁶ in 2022 and fell to $862.8 million in 2025.²⁶

Its total revenue went from $836.4 million in 2020 to $2,806.6 million²⁶ in 2022 and $1,054.3 million in 2025, back near the $833.5 million of 2016.²⁶

Its operating income peaked at $273.1 million²⁶ in 2022, after losses in most years from 2012 to 2020; in 2025 it lost $84.4 million.²⁶

In 2020, before the 2021-2023 peak, travel nursing was already the biggest part of US healthcare staffing: an industry estimate put the travel nurse market at $6.7 billion²⁷ in 2020, 39%² of $17.3 billion across travel nurse, per diem nurse, locum tenens and allied staffing.²⁷

Some states cap what agencies may charge. Minnesota has since 2001 barred a supplemental nursing agency from billing a nursing home more than 150%²⁸ of the weighted average wage rate plus payroll taxes, administrative and contract fees included. Massachusetts sets maximum hourly prices for agency nurses in nursing facilities and hospitals and lets agencies charge 19.7%²⁹ above them for travel nurses. The four measures in the table below are newer attempts, and none of them is an enacted cap.

Connecticut's 2022 act requires temporary nursing agencies to register and report their costs and fees, and has the state review the rates they charge nursing homes.³⁰ House File 2391, which passed the Iowa House 80 to 17 in 2024, would cap agency charges at 150%³¹ of the statewide average wage. A New York bill introduced in February 2023 would bar charging more than 30% above staff pay during a declared emergency, and a Missouri bill for a cap at 150% of the prior three-year average wage did not pass.³²

Demand for registered nurses to 2035

Official projections expect registered nurse jobs to grow 5.6%²³ from 2025 to 2035, to 3,660,100², faster than the 3.5% expected for all occupations. About 180,800² openings a year are projected, from new jobs and from replacing nurses who leave the occupation or the labor force.²³

A peer-reviewed forecast points the same way but lower than before the pandemic. The registered nurse workforce, 3.35 million³³ full-time equivalents in 2022 and 2023, is projected at 4.56 million in 2035, below the 4.64 million forecast before the pandemic.³³

What the numbers mean for a nurse weighing a contract

For a nurse comparing an offer with a staff job, the national averages give a rough scale: listings average $2,202 a week with stipends¹, against a mean weekly base wage of $1,950² for all registered nurses.⁸ The $251 difference is about 20%² of the $1,246 weekly stipend ceiling at the standard federal rate, so whether the stipend part is tax-free weighs more than the headline gap.³

Location changes the answer. In South Dakota the average listing is 1.68 times the local mean RN base wage; in California it is 0.89² times: the average offer⁵, stipends included, is below the average RN base wage there⁶ (September 2026 listings vs May 2025 wages).

Contracts end. A 13-week contract at the average rate pays $28,623² before tax.¹ Our yearly figures multiply the weekly rate by 52 and so assume a contract in every week of the year; any week between assignments without a contract lowers the total, so 52 times the weekly rate is an upper bound.

Conclusions

1. The travel premium is mostly stipend money, and the stipend is only as good as the tax home. Listings average $2,202 a week, 13% above the $1,950 all-RN mean weekly base wage (May 2025; the listings include stipends), yet agency-employed nurses' base pay of $46.19 an hour is 5% below the all-RN mean of $48.76.⁴ Housing and meal reimbursement was about 29% of the pay-plus-reimbursement part of 2022 bill rates¹⁰, and without a tax home the stipend is taxed like wages.³
2. The boom was bigger on hospitals' bills than in nurses' base pay. Rates charged to hospitals for travel nurses rose 213% from January 2019 to January 2022⁷, and California's hourly cost of supplemental (registry) nursing staff rose 62% against 10% for directly employed RNs¹⁰, while posted weekly pay rose 57% from June 2021 to January 2022¹ and agency nurses' mean base wage rose 46% from 2020 to 2023.⁴
3. Travel pay is flatter across states than RN pay, so it goes furthest where RN pay is lowest. Alaska's listings offer 1.48 times Mississippi's⁵, while California's mean RN hourly base wage is 1.95 times Alabama's⁶; the posted travel package is 1.68 times the average RN weekly base wage in South Dakota but 0.89 times in California (September 2026 listings vs May 2025 wages).
4. The market has reset, not vanished. Agency-employed RN jobs fell 20% from the 2024 peak of 105,740 to 84,640 in 2025, still nearly twice the 2020 level⁴; posted pay has held between $2,251 and $2,419 a week since 2024¹; and revenue per contractor-day at the smaller listed agency fell from $565 in 2022 to $346 in 2025.²⁶
5. Demand for nurses keeps growing, though more slowly than forecast before the pandemic. Registered nurse jobs are projected to grow 5.6% from 2025 to 2035, with about 180,800 openings a year²³; the post-pandemic forecast for 2035, 4.56 million full-time equivalents from 3.35 million in 2022-2023, is below the pre-pandemic 4.64 million.³³