Nurse Practitioner Salary in Idaho 2026,
$132,540 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Idaho figure is $132,540 a year, or $63.72 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $100,480 at the 10th percentile to $169,710 at the 90th. That is essentially level with the national median of $132,300. Idaho employs 1,750 nurse practitioners at a location quotient of 0.98 — almost exactly the national employment rate for the occupation.

Coeur d'Alene at $134,950, then Boise City $132,610, Twin Falls $131,640, Idaho Falls $128,260 and Pocatello $125,690. The whole table spans under 8%, so the metro choice is a minor factor next to specialty: the gap from the $123,920 twenty-fifth percentile to the $151,600 seventy-fifth dwarfs anything geography offers in this state.

Yes. Idaho is a full practice authority state: a nurse practitioner licensed by the Idaho Board of Nursing may evaluate, diagnose, order and interpret tests, and prescribe — including controlled substances — without a physician supervision or collaboration agreement. Idaho is also a Nurse Licensure Compact state at the registered-nurse level, which simplifies the underlying RN licence for practitioners moving in from another compact state.

It removes the ceiling that a supervision requirement imposes. In states requiring a collaborating physician, an NP post can only exist where a physician is available to sign for it; in Idaho it can exist anywhere there are patients. That is what makes rural independent practice viable and why the top of the Idaho band reaches $169,710 — those posts carry full clinical responsibility, and they are compensated for it rather than treated as an extension of a physician's practice.

On the structural measures, yes: full practice authority, a $132,540 median level with the national figure, below-average living costs, and the fastest national growth rate of any occupation in this batch at 40.1%. The qualifications are that Idaho's flat income tax is 5.8%, that the state pro-rates to roughly 160 openings a year on a 1,750-person workforce, and that the highest-paying opportunities generally mean rural practice with genuine clinical autonomy and genuine isolation.

Because scope of practice and demand are pulling in the same direction. Full practice authority means Idaho employers can deploy NPs as primary providers rather than as physician extenders, which raises the value of each hire; at the same time the state's rural counties have real prescriber shortages that make the hire necessary. Those forces lift Idaho to a $132,540 median against a national $132,300, despite a location quotient of 0.98 and living costs below the national average.

It aggregates population focuses that pay very differently. Psychiatric-mental health and acute care NPs command materially more than family practice NPs, and the $151,600 seventy-fifth percentile is largely those specialties rather than a more senior version of a primary-care post. The $100,480 tenth percentile, meanwhile, includes part-time and newly licensed practice. The band is wide precisely because SOC 29-1171 covers several distinct clinical careers under one heading.

Specialty and autonomy. Psychiatric-mental health practice is the clearest premium in this state, followed by acute, emergency and hospital-based roles — collectively the distance from the $132,540 median to the $151,600 seventy-fifth percentile. Above that, full practice authority creates a genuinely Idaho-specific route: an NP acting as the primary provider for a rural community, with call, coverage and full clinical responsibility, is doing a job that in most states requires a physician, and the $169,710 top decile reflects that.