Travel 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 deducted. That is the all-Registered-Nurses estimate, not a travel-nursing one, because BLS publishes no travel series. Treat it as the baseline agency contracts are priced against; the band runs $67,970 to $120,330.

Yes, and for travel nursing it is the most consequential fact about the state's paperwork. A multistate licence issued by another compact state authorises practice in Florida immediately — no application to the Florida Board of Nursing, no waiting period, no fee. That makes Florida one of the easiest states in the country to accept a short-notice assignment in. Nurses whose primary state of residence is Florida apply to the board for a multistate licence of their own.

Winter, principally. Florida's population swells substantially between roughly November and April as seasonal residents and visitors arrive, concentrated in the coastal and southern counties, and hospital demand rises with it — more emergency presentations, more admissions, more elective procedures scheduled by people wintering here. Hurricane season creates a different and less predictable kind of surge. For a traveller, timing a Florida contract to the winter season is one of the few genuinely actionable pieces of market knowledge in this state.

It simplifies the state side completely. Florida levies no personal income tax and no local income tax, so a nurse on a Florida assignment files nothing with the state on the taxable hourly portion of their package and has no non-resident return or home-state credit to manage — a real advantage over assignments in taxing states. The non-taxable housing and per-diem stipends are governed by federal rules and depend entirely on maintaining a genuine tax home elsewhere; Florida's tax position does not change that test at all.

Everything that distinguishes travel nursing from staff nursing. OEWS measures wages paid to employees on payrolls, so it does not capture agency contract structures, non-taxable housing and per-diem stipends, completion bonuses or crisis rates. It also pools travellers with the roughly 229,940 registered nurses in Florida as a whole and cannot show the winter seasonal pattern that drives travel demand here. Use the $101,180 seventy-fifth percentile and $120,330 ninetieth as realistic markers for what high-demand nursing work is worth in this state.

Because the population change is large, predictable and geographically concentrated. Most states have some seasonal healthcare variation; Florida has a winter influx substantial enough to change hospital census in the coastal and southern counties for several months at a time, and it arrives on a reliable calendar. A travel nurse can plan around that in a way they cannot plan around most demand fluctuations — targeting winter contracts in the affected regions, and expecting thinner availability and softer rates in late summer. Combined with compact membership, which means a nurse can accept a Florida assignment on short notice without licensing delay, the seasonality becomes genuinely actionable rather than merely interesting.

SOC 29-1141 covers about 229,940 Florida registered nurses across every setting. Travel nurses are a small, high-variance subset whose compensation combines a taxable hourly rate with non-taxable stipends that depend on maintaining a genuine tax home elsewhere — two nurses on identical Florida contracts can have very different take-home positions depending on that test alone. The BLS band is a sound benchmark for what nursing work is worth in this state; it is not a contract quote, and it cannot show the seasonal swings that drive travel rates here.

Specialty first — critical care, emergency, theatre and telemetry are what Florida facilities are short of, and in a compact state where licensing friction has been removed, clinical scarcity is what agencies pay for. Timing second, and it is unusually actionable here: winter contracts in the coastal and southern counties meet the state's seasonal demand peak. Acuity third, with the large metro systems' tertiary units carrying the highest rates. And shift availability fourth, since differentials are the main mechanism inside permanent employment and Florida taxes none of them.