The age old question about travel nursing is how much more can a traveling nurse make versus being a permanent staff nurse where they live? It’s pretty well known that a travel nurse will take home more pay than that of a staff nurse, and that’s just including salary.
The average salary for travel nurse jobs is $55,000. Average travel nurse salaries can vary greatly due to company, location, industry, experience and benefits.
This information is based on averages gathered by Simply Hired. A great way to use this site is to compare travel nurse pay in other cities versus your current residence. Let’s just say you’re currently living in Lincoln, NE and making $47,000 a year on average and now you want to know what you could be making in your dream city, San Francisco, CA as at traveling nurse. According to Simply Hired, you could average around $73,000 a year, that’s a $26,000 difference! For simplicity’s sake we are using annual salary, hourly or even on 3 month increments may be a better measure.
Being a travel nurse doesn’t mean you have to stretch yourself across the country. No, you could be hired as a traveling nurse and still be within an hour of your hometown, which makes it much more appealing for those who want to stay close to family and friends.
So using our example above, living in Lincoln, NE you’d make around $47,000 a year and if you decided to travel an hour to Omaha for a traveling nurse job you’d make roughly $52,000 a year. A difference of $5000 may not sound like that much, but if you factor in all the other benefits that come along with being a travel nurse like, per diem allowances, free housing or housing stipends and your proximity to your hometown – you’ll soon realize that it truly does pay to be a traveling nurse, 13 weeks at a time.