Emergency Room Nurse Salary in New York 2026,
$109,440 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $109,440 a year, or $52.62 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $79,760 at the 10th percentile to $157,090 at the 90th and quartiles at $94,840 and $129,660. That is 12.2% above the national median of $97,550. The row is SOC 29-1141, Registered Nurses — BLS does not publish an emergency nursing code, so the figure covers every RN specialty and setting in the state.

New York-Newark-Jersey City at $119,720, well clear of Glens Falls $104,000, Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh $102,890, Binghamton $101,720 and Kingston $101,030. The four non-city metros sit within a narrow range of one another. This is one of the occupations where the downstate premium is genuinely large rather than a statistical artefact of who is counted.

No. New York is not a member of the Nurse Licensure Compact, so a multistate licence issued by a compact state confers no authority to practise here. A nurse moving to New York applies to the State Education Department's Office of the Professions for licensure by endorsement, supplying verification of the original licence and meeting New York's own requirements including its infection control and child abuse identification coursework. Plan the application well before the intended start date.

No. New York issues one registered nurse licence through the State Board for Nursing, and emergency department practice is an assignment within it. The CEN certification from the Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing is a private credential — respected, often preferred, sometimes differential-eligible under a collective agreement, but not required by the state and not visible as a separate tier in the published wage band.

Because the row covers all of registered nursing and all of New York. The state's location quotient of 0.98 across 205,810 nurses says nurse employment here is at about the national rate for the state's size, and the upstate metros — Binghamton $101,720, Kingston $101,030 — are close to the national median. The state figure averages a genuinely high-paying downstate hospital market at $119,720 with a large upstate workforce paid near the national rate.

It means the licence is not portable and the timeline is not trivial. In a compact state, an RN holding a multistate licence can begin work on arrival. In New York, the Office of the Professions must issue a New York licence by endorsement first: verification of the original licence, evidence of education, and New York's own required coursework on infection control and child abuse identification. Employers know this and often build it into an offer, but a nurse planning a move should treat the application as the first step rather than a formality. The market effect is visible in the wage data — restricted inward supply supports the state's premium, particularly downstate where demand is heaviest.

By treating setting as the main variable. SOC 29-1141 pools hospital emergency nurses with nursing home, clinic, school and home health nurses, and those settings pay very differently. Emergency departments sit toward the upper half of the distribution for a structural reason: they run continuously, so night, weekend and holiday differentials are built into the schedule rather than occasional. That means an ED nurse in a New York City hospital is more likely to be found around the $129,660 seventy-fifth percentile than at the $109,440 median, and the median understates the realistic target for that specific job.

New York's $109,440 leads Alaska $109,480 only by losing to it narrowly, and sits above New Jersey $106,500, Massachusetts $104,550, Nevada $103,670 and Connecticut $102,740. Those are close margins and they are not adjusted for cost of living, which in New York and particularly New York City is severe. A nurse comparing a New York offer against a New Jersey one should note that the state medians are within a few percent of each other while the New York City resident income tax of 3.078% to 3.876% is not, and that New Jersey is a compact state while New York is not.