Pediatric Nurse Salary in Florida 2026,
$84,190 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Florida figure is $84,190 a year, or $40.48 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 13.7% below the national median of $97,550, with no state income tax taken from it. That is the all-Registered-Nurses estimate rather than a paediatric one; BLS publishes no paediatric series. The band runs $67,970 at the 10th percentile to $120,330 at the 90th.

In the state's dedicated children's hospitals, which sit in Miami, Orlando, Tampa, St Petersburg, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach. General hospitals across Florida carry paediatric beds, but the specialist paediatric intensive care, oncology, cardiology and surgical units are concentrated in those systems. A nurse planning a paediatric career in Florida is realistically planning to live in one of those metros, which narrows the geography considerably compared with general registered nursing.

Naples-Marco Island at $93,330, then Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach $91,380, North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota $86,130, Sebring $85,690 and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater $85,470. For paediatric nurses the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater rows matter most, since those markets hold dedicated children's hospital capacity.

The state requires only a Florida RN licence from the Board of Nursing, or a multistate licence from another Nurse Licensure Compact state — there is no paediatric credential issued by Florida. Employers require unit-specific competency assessment, and the CPN certification is the recognised paediatric specialty credential, generally carrying differential pay at Florida children's hospital systems. Paediatric intensive care units additionally expect critical care competency and, commonly, a paediatric critical care certification.

Several things compound. Compact membership means Florida employers recruit from a national licensed pool without administrative friction. The state's cost of living outside the coastal metros is below the national average and feeds into wage setting. And children's hospitals here face a payer mix shaped by Florida's high rate of uninsured and publicly covered children, which constrains what they can pay. The offset is that Florida taxes none of the $84,190, including every shift differential.

Through the hospital's revenue rather than directly, but it reaches nonetheless. A children's hospital whose patient population is weighted toward Medicaid, the state children's health insurance programme and uninsured children collects materially less per admission than one with a commercially insured population, and Florida has one of the higher rates of uninsured and publicly covered children in the country. That constrains the hospital's total compensation budget, its staffing levels and its ability to compete on pay. It does not make the clinical work less demanding — if anything the reverse, since delayed presentation is more common in under-insured populations — but it does explain part of why paediatric nursing in this state sits 13.7% below the national RN median.

SOC 29-1141 is Registered Nurses in full — about 229,940 people in Florida across every setting. Paediatric nursing is a subset employed largely in a handful of children's hospital systems with their own pay structures and differentials, none of which the base estimate separates out. It also reports annual wages without adjusting for part-time working, and excludes agency and travel arrangements entirely. Use the $101,180 seventy-fifth percentile as a more realistic reference for experienced certified paediatric practice.

Acuity first — paediatric intensive care, cardiac and oncology units pay above general paediatric wards, and that is much of the distance from the $84,190 median to the $101,180 seventy-fifth percentile. Certification second, with CPN and paediatric critical care credentials carrying differential pay at Florida children's hospital systems. Metro third, since the dedicated children's hospitals sit in specific markets. And shift pattern fourth, worth proportionally more here than in taxing states because every differential arrives untaxed.