Nurse Practitioner Salary in Mississippi 2026,
$124,730 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $124,730 a year, or $59.96 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $106,660 and $134,020 and a full range of $98,780 to $156,830. That is 5.7% below the $132,300 national median, though the state's 75th percentile clears the national median.

Gulfport-Biloxi at $128,150, ahead of Jackson at $124,730 and Hattiesburg at $113,300. The nearly fifteen-thousand-dollar gap between the coast and Hattiesburg is large for a three-metro table, and it reflects a coastal economy — casinos, shipbuilding, military — with more competition for clinical staff than the Pine Belt has.

No. Mississippi requires a collaborative or consultative relationship with a physician, and prescriptive authority operates within that arrangement rather than flowing from the licence alone. Given how heavily this state relies on nurse practitioners — nearly twice the national employment rate — that requirement has real consequences: a nurse practitioner may be the only clinician available in a rural county and still need a collaborating physician arrangement in place.

Because the state has among the most extensive primary care shortage designations in the country and ranks at or near the bottom nationally on most population health measures. A location quotient of 1.94 — nearly double the national rate per worker — is what happens when physician supply cannot cover the need and employers turn to advanced practice clinicians instead. In much of rural Mississippi, the nurse practitioner is the primary care system.

Better than the 5.7% gap suggests. The state is phasing its income tax toward a flat 4% with no local layer, property taxes are low and housing costs are among the lowest in the United States — a nurse practitioner earning $124,730 here has more disposable income than one earning the national median in most states. The 7% sales tax applying to groceries is the offset, and the honest non-financial caveats are the practice constraints and the clinical isolation of rural work.

It means the job is different here. In a state where nurse practitioners are employed at nearly twice the national rate and physician coverage across the Delta and the rural counties is thin, a nurse practitioner is frequently the principal — sometimes the only — clinician a community sees. That brings breadth of practice that a metropolitan post would not, genuine autonomy in day-to-day decision-making, and a patient population with among the highest chronic disease burdens in the country. It also brings professional isolation, limited specialist referral options and the awkwardness of needing a collaborative arrangement in a place with few physicians to collaborate with. Anyone weighing a Mississippi post should understand that the clinical experience, not just the salary, is what differs.

Population focus and geography. Psychiatric mental health and acute care nurse practitioners earn substantially more than family practice ones, and both sit inside this number — much of what the $98,780 to $156,830 range describes. Only three metros are published in a largely rural state, so most of Mississippi's nurse practitioners work outside them entirely and are not represented by any city figure here. The median also excludes productivity arrangements, call pay and the loan repayment and shortage-area incentives that are a substantial part of compensation in this state.

Population focus first — psychiatric mental health, then acute and critical care and surgical subspecialties, which reach the $134,020 seventy-fifth percentile and the $156,830 ninetieth. Geography second, and Gulfport-Biloxi at $128,150 over Hattiesburg at $113,300 is worth nearly fifteen thousand dollars. Employer third: the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the larger systems offer lead advanced practice roles that community practice does not. And shortage-area loan repayment and recruitment incentives are substantial in Mississippi and sit entirely outside the published wage.