Travel Nurse Salary in Texas 2026,
$95,970 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Texas figure is $95,970 a year, or $46.14 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 1.6% 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 $67,120 to $127,950.

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

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $101,420, then Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands $99,830, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos $97,890, San Antonio-New Braunfels $94,370 and Killeen-Temple $93,440. The spread is about eight thousand dollars across the state's major markets, which for a traveller is smaller than the difference specialty and acuity make to a contract rate.

It simplifies the state side entirely and leaves the federal side untouched. Because Texas levies no personal income tax, a nurse on a Texas 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 a separate matter governed by federal rules, and they depend entirely on maintaining a genuine tax home elsewhere. Texas's tax position does nothing to change that test.

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 271,380 registered nurses in Texas as a whole. Use the $105,100 seventy-fifth percentile and $127,950 ninetieth as realistic markers for what high-demand nursing work is worth in this state, and treat the stipend structure as a separate calculation resting on a genuine tax home.

Because contract rates respond to how quickly a vacancy can be filled, and compact membership removes the slowest step. In a non-compact state a hospital with an urgent gap can only hire nurses who already hold that state's licence, or wait weeks for an endorsement application — scarcity that agencies price into the rate. In Texas a multistate-licensed nurse can start immediately, so the pool available to any given vacancy is effectively national and the urgency premium largely disappears. What remains is genuine clinical scarcity: specialty skills, high-acuity units, unpopular shifts. Texas travel rates therefore track acuity and specialty rather than administrative friction, which is a more rational market but a less lucrative one for the traveller.

SOC 29-1141 covers about 271,380 Texas 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 a genuine tax home elsewhere — two nurses on identical Texas 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 does not reflect the seasonal swings that drive travel rates.

Specialty first — critical care, emergency, theatre and labour and delivery are what Texas facilities are short of, and in a compact state where administrative scarcity has been removed, clinical scarcity is what agencies pay for. Acuity second, with the large metro systems' tertiary units carrying the highest rates. Shift and weekend availability third, since differentials are the main mechanism inside permanent employment and Texas taxes none of them. And timing fourth: contract rates in this state respond to genuine surges, so availability during them matters more than it does where licensing friction smooths demand.