93% of Nurses Say Their Pay Isn’t Keeping Up: Nurse.org Salary Survey 2026 Results

Every year, nurses hear the same reassurance: healthcare is growing, nurses are in demand, and pay is going up. So we asked nurses directly whether that matches reality.

It doesn’t.

Between March and July 2026, 3,758 nurses across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. took Nurse.org’s 2026 Salary Survey and told us about their pay, their most recent raise, and whether their income is keeping up with life. The results are hard to ignore: 93% of nurses say their pay is not keeping up with inflation and workload. Only 7% say they’re satisfied.

This isn’t a story about a few unhappy outliers. It’s the overwhelming majority of a profession that has spent the past several years being called essential.

How Nurses Say Their Pay Compares With Inflation and Workload

We asked a simple question: Does your current nursing pay keep up with inflation and workload?

• 49% said, “No, I’m falling behind badly.”
• 23% said, “I’m underpaid vs. new hires.”
• 21% said, “Barely, my raises just match my increased costs.”
• Only 7% said, “Yes, I’m satisfied overall.”

Read that 2nd answer again. Nearly 1 in 4 nurses believe the person who started last month is earning as much as, or more than, they are. There’s a name for that: salary compression. And the pay data later in this survey backs it up.

If pay isn’t keeping up, raises are supposed to be the fix. We asked nurses whether their most recent raise meaningfully improved their financial situation.

84% said no.

• 54% said their raise was offset by inflation or extra hours
• 30% haven’t received a raise at all
• 13% said it helped slightly, but wasn’t life-changing
• Just 3% said their raise was enough to feel financially secure

Three percent. In a profession the country cannot function without, 3 out of every 100 nurses feel like their last raise made them financially secure.

The nurses least likely to have received any raise? Nurse practitioners (42% report no raise) and LPNs/LVNs (39%), compared with about 25% of BSN-prepared RNs. Whether you’re at the top of the licensure ladder or holding the front lines of long-term care, raises are skipping over you at higher rates.

Here’s the finding that explains why so many experienced nurses feel underpaid compared to new hires.

*Median reported range among survey respondents. Source: Nurse.org Salary Survey.

A nurse with more than 20 years of experience typically reports earning about $10 an hour more than a nurse in their first four years. Two decades of night shifts, codes, precepting, and institutional knowledge, worth roughly ten dollars an hour.

And notice the right-hand column: dissatisfaction barely moves with experience. New grads and 20-year veterans report feeling behind at almost identical rates. Whatever is broken about nursing pay, it isn’t something nurses age out of.

Nurse Salary by License and Degree

Source: Nurse.org Salary Survey.

The ladder works the way you’d expect, with one exception worth naming: advanced degrees raise pay, but they don’t raise satisfaction. Look at the two groups most likely to say they’re falling behind badly: LPNs/LVNs (57%) near the bottom of the pay scale, and NPs (58%) near the top. NPs were also among the most likely of any group to report receiving no raise at all. Higher pay with stalled growth still feels like falling behind, because it is.

Among specialties with at least 100 respondents:

Source: Nurse.org Salary Survey.

The pattern at the bottom of this table deserves more attention than it gets. Long-term care nurses report the lowest typical pay of any major specialty, with geriatrics and home health just one band above. These are the nurses caring for our aging population, in settings that lean heavily on LPNs/LVNs, which compounds the gap. And note the sentiment column: home health nurses are the most likely of any specialty to say they’re falling behind.

The table below shows states where at least 50 nurses responded, ranked by typical reported hourly pay. States with fewer than 50 responses aren’t ranked yet; this is a living table, and states will be added as responses come in.

Source: Nurse.org Salary Survey.

Two things stand out. First, higher-paying states are not happier states. California nurses report the highest typical pay in the survey and still, nearly half say they’re falling behind badly. Cost of living eats the difference. Second, frustration runs hottest in the middle and bottom of the table: Missouri, Texas, Virginia, and Colorado nurses report “falling behind badly” at 56%, with Florida close behind at 55% — and Florida, the survey’s largest state by responses, now sits in the bottom pay band alongside Tennessee and Ohio.

For official government wage data by state, see our breakdown of the latest BLS numbers. Survey responses tell you what nurses actually take home and how it feels; BLS tells you the official averages. You need both to see the full picture.

Nurses aren’t confused about their value. They’re watching new-hire offers outpace their own paychecks, raises arrive smaller than their grocery bills, and two decades of expertise price out at ten dollars an hour. Nearly half the profession describes itself as falling behind badly, and that frustration is showing up everywhere from contract negotiations to picket lines.

We’ll keep the survey open and update these results as more nurses respond. If your state isn’t ranked yet, it may only be a few dozen responses away.

🤔 Does your pay reflect your experience and workload? Tell us what a fair raise would actually look like for you. Tell us in the comments below.

Nurse.org Salary Survey Methodology

Nurse.org’s 2026 Salary Survey collected 3,758 responses from March 1 through July 22, 2026, via a survey embedded across selected sections of Nurse.org’s content; it was not displayed sitewide. Two pre-launch test submissions were excluded, and eleven responses submitted from the same network with identical answers to all questions were removed as duplicates; responses from shared networks with differing answers were retained. Responses were self-selected; respondents self-reported license type, experience, employment status, specialty, state, and pay in ranges. All 50 states and Washington, D.C. are represented. “Typical pay” refers to the median reported pay range within a group. State results are reported only where at least 50 nurses responded; state-level typical pay ranges carry a margin of roughly one pay band. Respondents skew experienced (71% report 10+ years in nursing) relative to the national nursing workforce, and results reflect Nurse.org readers rather than a probability sample of all U.S. nurses.

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