Registered Nurse Salary in 2026: What an RN Actually Earns

Reviewed May 22, 2026 by the ScrubScope editorial team.

The median registered nurse salary was $93,600 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2024 release, the most recent full survey.^[1] Half of RNs earned more than that, half less. The number you personally land on is decided less by the job title than by where you work, your setting, and how long you have been in the role. That is the part the salary roundups skip.

The short answer

A registered nurse in the United States earns a median of about $93,600 a year on the BLS May 2024 data, well above the median for all occupations.^[1] The range around that figure is wide, and two facts matter before you read another chart. First, a first nursing job pays below the median, because the median reflects the whole workforce, including experienced nurses. Second, the single biggest mover of RN pay is the state you work in, not the school you attended. For the full state-by-state breakdown, see RN salary by state.

Entry-level versus experienced RN pay

The headline median describes the middle of the entire RN workforce. A new graduate does not start there.

BLS reports that the lowest-paid tenth of registered nurses earned less than $66,030 in May 2024, while the highest-paid tenth earned more than $135,320.^[1] A nurse in the first year out of licensure sits nearer the lower end of that spread, not the median, and pay climbs with years in the role.

Treat the median as the figure you grow toward, not the figure you start at. Outcomes vary by employer and market, so anchor an offer on the entry-level end of the range rather than the headline number.

What moves the number

Four things move RN pay far more than the program you graduated from.

Geography. This is the largest single lever. The same RN license is paid very differently across state lines, and the gap is wider than cost-of-living alone explains. California reports the highest state wages on the BLS survey.^[2] The state-by-state guide covers this in detail.

Setting. BLS reports RN wages by industry, and a hospital RN, an outpatient-clinic RN, and an RN in a nursing or residential care facility do not sit at the same point on the distribution.

Experience. A nurse in the first year out of licensure is rarely near the median. The nurses at the top of the range are typically experienced, often in a high-acuity or specialized unit.

Shift and overtime. Night, weekend, and on-call differentials, plus overtime, are a real part of many RN paychecks and are not captured by a base-wage table.

What does not move the number much is the price of the school. A more expensive pre-licensure program does not produce a higher BLS wage; it produces a higher loan balance against the same median.

Does a BSN pay more than an ADN?

This is the question most career-changers actually want answered, and the honest version has two parts.

On the BLS table, an RN is an RN: the survey reports wages for the occupation, not separately by entry degree, so there is no clean government figure showing a BSN salary premium over an ADN. What is well documented is access, not a guaranteed raise. A growing share of hospitals, including those pursuing Magnet recognition, prefer or require a BSN, so the bachelor's degree more often decides which jobs and units are open to you than it changes the wage on a given posting. Many working ADN nurses close that gap later through an RN-to-BSN program.

Job outlook

BLS projects employment of registered nurses to grow 5 percent from 2024 to 2034, faster than the average of 3 percent for all occupations.^[1] The agency projects about 189,100 RN openings each year over the decade, on average, many of them to replace nurses who retire or change occupations.^[1] Strong demand supports the wage; it does not guarantee any individual a job or a particular salary.

Bottom line

The defensible registered nurse salary figure for 2026 is the BLS May 2024 median of $93,600, with a wide range from below $66,030 to above $135,320 driven mostly by state, setting, and experience rather than by the school's name.^[1] Expect a first job to pay below the national median, anchor your planning on the current BLS estimate for your state, and weigh what a program costs against the pay it leads to.

If you are weighing nursing as a career, start with how to become a nurse, and keep the nursing terms glossary open for the abbreviations. If you are already an RN considering an advanced role, the nurse practitioner salary guide covers the next step.

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