Nurse Practitioner Salary in Massachusetts 2026,
$142,440 Median | BLS Data by City

Massachusetts nurse practitioners earn a median $142,440 a year, $68.48 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $132,460 and $168,100 and a full range of $111,950 to $207,710. That is 7.7% above the $132,300 national median, and the top of the range is unusually high for this occupation.

Boston-Cambridge-Newton at $147,480, then Barnstable Town at $139,840, Springfield at $138,460, Pittsfield at $136,730 and Worcester at $135,120. Boston's twelve-thousand-dollar lead over Worcester reflects the concentration of academic medical centre and specialty practice in the eastern market.

Yes, after a transition. Massachusetts grants nurse practitioners authority to prescribe and manage care independently once they have completed a defined period of supervised practice following licensure. Before that period is complete, practice is under supervision. That structure is different from states granting full authority immediately, and it makes the first years of a Massachusetts NP career a distinct stage rather than a formality.

Through the Board of Registration in Nursing at the Department of Public Health. You need an active Massachusetts RN licence, a graduate nursing degree in your population focus, and current national certification. The Board authorises advanced practice registered nursing and prescriptive practice; the supervised period required before independent authority runs after that authorisation is granted.

The wage difference is real — $147,480 against $135,120 in Worcester — and Massachusetts's flat 5.0% tax with no local income tax means all of it arrives. What Boston actually buys is access to specialty and acute care practice, which is where the state 75th percentile of $168,100 and the $207,710 ninetieth live. Housing costs are the counterweight, and Springfield at $138,460 in a far cheaper market is a genuinely competitive alternative.

It removed a structural ceiling. Before the change, Massachusetts NPs practised under physician supervision arrangements that limited where and how independently they could work — a particular constraint in a state whose health system is dominated by large physician-led academic organisations. Independent authority after a supervised period widened deployment into primary care and behavioural health, especially outside Greater Boston, and it strengthened the bargaining position of experienced NPs across the state.

It blends population foci with very different markets. Psychiatric-mental health NPs in Massachusetts command substantially more than family practice NPs, and acute care NPs in Boston teaching hospitals more again — all in one wage row. The $132,460 twenty-fifth percentile is closer to a primary care figure, and the $207,710 ninetieth is a specialty one; the median describes neither especially well.

Certification and call. The step from $142,440 to the $168,100 seventy-fifth percentile normally runs through acute care or psychiatric-mental health certification, or a hospital service carrying call obligations, rather than through service years. Beyond that, the $207,710 ninetieth percentile is academic medical centre specialty practice or leadership of an advanced practice team — and, increasingly in Massachusetts, behavioural health practice where the supply shortfall is most severe.