Registered Nurse Salary: Pay Guide by Experience and State

What This Job Pays Right Now

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a median annual wage for registered nurses, with the hourly equivalent of that figure, in its May 2025 occupational wage data. The same release gives both ends of the distribution: the lowest 10 percent of RNs earned less than a stated amount and the highest 10 percent earned more than a stated amount (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). BLS also publishes a separate national annual mean wage for RNs, noting that registered nursing is the largest healthcare practitioners and technical occupation in the country. Mean and median are not the same number — the mean is pulled up by the top of the range, so quote the median for a typical nurse.

To see whether pay has risen or fallen, compare the May 2025 median against the median reported for the prior data year, May 2024, which BLS described as nearly double the national median wage for all U.S. occupations (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 edition, reporting May 2024 data). Both sit on the BLS registered nurses page. For context inside healthcare, BLS publishes a median annual wage for all healthcare practitioners and technical occupations in the same May 2025 release.

Three places to pull the live number:

• The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook entry for registered nurses — national median annual and hourly.
• The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) tables — percentiles, state and metro detail.
• ONET OnLine's registered nurses page, which republishes BLS 2025 wage data nationally, by state and by city (ONET OnLine, sourced to BLS, 2025).

Pay by Experience Level

BLS does not publish RN wages by years of experience. It publishes a percentile distribution, and experience is one of the main things that moves a nurse through it, alongside shift, specialty and employer. Use this table to read the right cell of the BLS May 2025 data for your stage.

Two cross-checks are worth running. The middle half of RNs — the 25th to 75th percentile band — has been calculated from the BLS OEWS May 2025 percentile data and published as a low-to-high range (nuecareer.com, citing BLS OEWS May 2025); the spread inside that band is driven mainly by state and employer type. Separately, an aggregator publishes distinct entry-level and experienced RN ranges built from BLS OEWS May 2025 mean wage data (annualpaycalculator.com, 2025).

Early on, moving up the distribution usually comes from the shift and the unit, not a title change: a new graduate on nights in critical care can out-earn a day-shift nurse with more years on a medical-surgical floor at the same hospital.

Pay by State or Metro Area

BLS publishes an annual mean wage for registered nurses in every state, and the spread is wide. In the May 2025 data, state mean wages ran from roughly the same low figure in both Alabama and South Dakota up to the highest figure in California (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). California was also the highest-paying state for RNs on average in the 2024 BLS data (nuecareer.com, citing BLS 2024 data), so its position is not a one-year artefact.

Cost of living matters at both ends. California's top-of-the-table average comes with the highest housing costs in the continental US, so price rent or a mortgage in the specific metro before treating the difference as take-home gain. Alabama, at the bottom of the state range, has markedly lower housing and household costs, which closes part — not all — of the gap. Negotiate against your state and metro table, not the national median.

Pay by Employer Type or Industry

BLS reports separate median annual wages for registered nurses in five industry groups in its May 2025 data. Read them side by side before accepting that an offer is "about standard."

The ranking between those five medians is the point of the table, and it is published, so you do not have to guess at it.

What Actually Moves Your Pay

Each factor below changes what you earn, and each is documented somewhere you can read. Where the size of the effect is set locally, the bullet names the document that holds the number.

• State. The largest single factor: BLS May 2025 state mean wages run from Alabama and South Dakota at the bottom to California at the top. Pull both your current and target state from the OEWS state table.
• Industry and employer type. BLS publishes separate RN medians for government, hospitals, ambulatory healthcare, nursing and residential care, and educational services (May 2025). Compare the two settings you are choosing between directly.
• Shift differentials. Nights, weekends, holidays and on-call are paid as a set extra per hour on top of base, which is why hospital RNs have been reported to earn more than clinic RNs (annualpaycalculator.com, 2025). The per-hour amount is in the employer's pay policy or union contract — ask for it in writing.
• Union membership. Unionized hospital RNs have been reported to receive scheduled annual raises, with one example of a Sacramento nurse reaching a higher hourly rate within a few years (nuecareer.com, 2025). The local contract's step schedule gives the increase per year of service.
• Position in the distribution. The gap between the 10th and 90th percentile in the BLS May 2025 data is the floor-to-ceiling spread for this job; the middle half of nurses fall in the 25th-to-75th band calculated from it (nuecareer.com, citing BLS OEWS May 2025).
• Specialty and certification. Critical care, emergency, perioperative and oncology certifications are usually paid as a per-hour differential or an annual bonus, both employer-set — check the clinical ladder document.
• Metro versus rural within one state. Ohio's statewide average and Columbus's city average are published separately (O*NET OnLine, sourced to BLS, 2025), showing the within-state spread you can capture without changing licence.