Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
No official statistic isolates travel nurses, whose pay combines a taxable hourly wage with housing and meal stipends. We set 274,776 travel registered nurse (RN) job listings of September 2026 against Bureau of Labor Statistics wage estimates for agency-employed and all RNs, federal per diem and tax rules, government and peer-reviewed studies of hospital and nursing-home staffing costs, and the filings of two listed staffing companies. Listings offered a mean of USD 2,202 and a median of USD 2,155 a week, 13% above the USD 1,950 mean weekly base wage of all RNs; the monthly mean had peaked at USD 3,288 in January 2022 and in September 2026 was 31% lower. Agency-employed RNs earned a mean base wage of USD 46.19 an hour in May 2025, below the USD 48.76 of all RNs, after exceeding it by 17% in 2023; their number rose from 43,160 in 2020 to 105,740 in 2024 and fell 20% to 84,640 in 2025. At the standard federal rate, up to USD 1,246 a week of stipends can be tax-free. Posted pay ranged from USD 2,718 in Alaska to USD 1,839 in Mississippi and was below the local RN base wage in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. During the pandemic the rates hospitals were charged for travel nurses rose 213% between January 2019 and January 2022; at six hospitals the hourly cost of supplemental nurses rose 53–266% from 2019 to 2022. Travel nurse staffing revenue at the largest listed agency peaked at USD 2,913 million in 2022 and fell 72% by 2025.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Oyelaran et al. (2026) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: