Registered nurses earn an annual median wage of $97,550, according to data released in May from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The figure is nearly double the median wage for all occupations in the United States and was 13 percent higher than the median wage for overall healthcare practitioners and technical occupations.
Payments for registered nurses in some states were comparable to management occupations.
With a median salary of more than $140,000, registered nurses in California earned the highest pay among nurses nationwide, surpassing the country’s general and operations managers’ median pay by 33 percent.
Nurses in Hawaii ($136,000), Oregon ($129,000), and Washington ($124,000) earned more than $120,000—almost 20 percent more than the national median amount for corporate leaders overseeing multiple departments or locations.
Registered nurses’ incomes also outperformed computer experts, aerospace engineers, and legal professionals in many states.
California nurses attained 10 percent more than computer systems analysts and 42 percent more than aerospace engineers.
In Hawaii, nurses were paid 54 percent higher than computer experts and 9 percent more than lawyers.
Alabama nurses received a salary of $77,000, the lowest median income for registered nurses, but still more than almost 75 percent of workers in the United States.
Some states can explain the payment with nursing shortages. California nurses will reach an estimated 44,500 deficit in 2030, according to a June report from resource center RegisteredNursing.org.
Texas, New Jersey, and South Carolina will lack more than 10,000 registered nurses in 2030, while Alaska, Georgia, and South Dakota will each be short several thousand, the resource center projected.
Meanwhile, Florida and Ohio will have about 50,000 more nurses than they will need. Virginia, New York, Missouri, and North Carolina are estimated to have more than 15,000 extra registered nurses, according to the report.
“There is no nurse shortage. Rather, there is a nurse retention crisis due to the industry’s systematic failure to invest in safe, quality, human-to-human patient care,” said National Nurses United, a union of registered nurses.
“There is a shortage of nurses willing to care for patients under the unsafe working conditions set by the hospital industry,” said the union.
In 2025, America employed about 3.38 million registered nurses, according to labor statistics.
That was just 57 percent of the licensed registered nurses.
Individuals with active licenses for registered nurses reached 5.9 million as of December 2025 and grew to 6.05 million as of July 16, according to data from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.
“The data is clear that the U.S. nursing profession has a retention crisis, not a nurse shortage,” said Jamie Brown, the union president and a registered nurse.
“We want the public to know that our working conditions are so unsafe and unsustainable,” Brown said, adding that these issues are driving new and experienced nurses away from hospitals.
A February study from the Journal of the American Medical Association Network identified inadequate staffing as the main issue preventing non-retired nurses from returning to work.
Nearly one-third of nurses reported job dissatisfaction and more than one-quarter intended to leave, according to a May study from Medical Care.
Nurses evaluated working conditions as at their worst post-pandemic, the study found. More than 60 percent reported not enough staff, with staffing ratios on medical-surgical units of 6.0 patients-to-nurse.
Evaluations of patient safety, quality of care, and management responsiveness were significantly worse post-pandemic, according to the study.
