ICU Nurse Salary in Texas 2026,
$95,970 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Texas figure for this wage row is $95,970 a year, or $46.14 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 1.6% below the national median of $97,550. The row is SOC 29-1141, Registered Nurses, which covers all RN specialties rather than critical care alone. An experienced ICU nurse with certification and differentials generally sits above that median, toward the $105,100 seventy-fifth percentile, within a band running $67,120 to $127,950.

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $101,420, then Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands $99,830, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos $97,890, San Antonio-New Braunfels $94,370 and Killeen-Temple $93,440. That is about an eight-thousand-dollar spread across the state's major markets, and with no state income tax anywhere in Texas the ranking passes through to take-home pay unchanged.

Yes, and it matters more here than the wage figures do for many nurses. Texas is a member of the Nurse Licensure Compact, so a multistate licence issued on Texas residence permits practice in every other compact state without a separate application, and nurses holding compact licences from other member states may practise in Texas on them. That makes travel and agency work straightforward to enter from a Texas base, and it gives staff nurses a credible alternative that nurses in non-compact states do not have.

Frequently, though it is an employer arrangement rather than a state one. The Texas Board of Nursing issues no critical care licence and does not require certification; the CCRN credential comes from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and is national. Many Texas health systems pay a certification differential or build it into clinical ladder programmes, and it is often a prerequisite for charge and preceptor roles — so its effect on pay is real but arrives through the employer's structure rather than through licensure.

Better than the gross figures suggest. The $1,580 gross gap to the national median is small, and Texas levies no state income tax, no state disability contribution and no paid family leave premium — so the whole of a Texas nurse's pay is state-tax free. Against high-wage, high-tax states the net comparison often favours Texas even where the gross does not, and the advantage grows with overtime, which in critical care is a substantial part of many nurses' earnings.

It means the state employs registered nurses at about nine-tenths the national rate relative to total employment, on a base of 271,380. Texas has no state-mandated nurse staffing ratios, so unit-level assignments are set by employers and by the state's requirement that hospitals operate nurse staffing committees rather than by a fixed number. In critical care the practical consequence is that assignment ratios and support staffing vary substantially between Texas systems, and they are worth asking about as carefully as the wage.

It is an all-RN median being read as an ICU figure, and critical care sits above it — so the number understates the specialty. It also blends employment types: staff, per diem and travel nurses are compensated on completely different structures, and travel contracts in particular can far exceed the $127,950 ninetieth percentile for short periods while carrying no benefits. And it annualises an occupation where overtime, on-call and differential pay are a large and variable component, so the $46.14 hourly median is the better basis for comparing two specific rosters.

Shift and differential structure first, because critical care runs continuously and nights, weekends and holidays carry real premiums — that is much of the distance from the $79,170 twenty-fifth percentile to the $105,100 seventy-fifth. Then certification and clinical ladder position, since CCRN and system-specific ladders convert experience into scheduled increases. Then unit acuity, with cardiovascular, neuro and transplant ICUs generally paying above general critical care. And then the compact licence, which makes travel contracts and cross-state agency work available as a deliberate earnings strategy.