Map My Pay

10/14/2026

A nurse working for the State of Hawaii gets $8.70 more an hour the day the job moves up from RN II to RN III.

These rates come from the State of Hawaii salary schedule for Bargaining Unit 9, the registered nurses HGEA represents. One schedule covers nurses at state agencies, the four counties, the Judiciary, and the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation hospitals, from Hilo Benioff Medical Center and Kona Community Hospital to Leahi Hospital on Oahu.

This is public sector pay. It does not set pay at Hawaii Pacific Health, Adventist Health Castle, Kaiser Permanente, or any other private hospital, since those nurses bargain separately.

A new grad starts as an RN II at $45.99 an hour and stays on that one rate until the job moves up. RN III starts at $54.69 and climbs to $69.58 at 25 years. RN IV adds $5.60 to $7.17 an hour at every step on top of that.

How base pay breaks down, effective July 1, 2026:
💵 New grad RN II: $45.99/hr, or $95,664 a year on a 40-hour week
💵 RN III with 2 years of experience: $61.52/hr
💵 RN III at 25 years: $69.58/hr, or $144,732 a year
🌙 Nights add $4.00 an hour, and weekends add $1.00
🩺 Nurse practitioners start at $146,724 a year

The first four steps follow your total years as an RN, so experience from another state counts if you earned it in the last five years. Raises of about 3.4% are already set for July 2027 and July 2028.

For perspective, the typical US nurse earns about $91K a year. A new grad here clears that on the first day. Hawaii is also one of the most expensive places in the country to live, and the state takes an income tax, so the same paycheck stretches further in Hilo than in Honolulu.

Map My Pay shows your exact rate from your years of experience, hours per week, and shift, then what your paycheck leaves after rent and taxes.

Comment "MMP" to compare your pay against cost of living in any city.

10/13/2026

A nurse anesthetist earns the most of any role in nursing, about $236,590 a year at the national median, against about $97,550 for a staff RN. That is a raise of roughly $139,040. But the gross number is not what you get after income taxes are deducted...cost of living matters just as much, and the gap between the best and worst cities runs past $100,000 a year in kept pay.

I ran the full breakdown for every city in the Map My Pay database, gross pay to income taxes to rent to see what's left:

🏔️ Anchorage, AK nurses keep about $219,102 a year (no state income tax)

🦬 Buffalo, NY nurses keep about $188,003 a year on BLS Verified pay

🤠 Houston, TX nurses keep about 68 cents of every extra dollar over a staff RN

🌴 Los Angeles, CA nurses keep about 58 cents of that same raise, because California taxes high earners hard

The lesson holds across every pay story I dug into: the state tax code and the local rent decide the outcome, but no matter where they work, CRNAs have less to worry about financially than other advanced nurse practitioners.

Also, these numbers don't factor the earnings of a Locums CRNA, which has the ability to earn hundreds of thousands more per year than the W2 CRNA.

Full breakdown: mapmypay.com/nurse-anesthetist-pay-by-city
Or comment "BLOG" and I'll send you the post.

Download the app: https://iig9q.app.link/download
Or comment "MMP" and I'll send you the link to download it, so you can compare wages and cost of living for LPNs, RNs, NPs, and CRNAs across 21,000 cities.

10/10/2026

Registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente Colorado start at $49.15 an hour this month.

These are RN wages under the UFCW Local 7 Multi-Professional contract with Kaiser Permanente Colorado. One scale covers the general RN grade across the region, and a few higher-paid RN grades sit beside it.

The scale applies only to RNs in this union at Kaiser Colorado. Kaiser Colorado LPNs work under a separate SEIU Local 105 contract, and RNs at other Colorado hospitals are paid on their own scales.

The signed contract prints rates only through October 2024. These figures apply the two 6.5% raises in the new agreement, from March and October 2026, to that printed scale, so the rate may differ by a few cents.

Those two raises moved the whole scale about 13% in seven months. A new RN this month starts above the $48.75 that a Kaiser Colorado RN with two years earned in late 2024.

How the October 2026 scale breaks down:
💵 Start: $49.15/hr (about $102K a year at 40 hours)
💵 2 years: $55.29/hr
💵 5 years: $63.17/hr
💵 15 years: $73.40/hr (about $153K a year)
🌙 Nights add $5.25 an hour, so a 15-year RN on nights earns $78.65.
🪜 Career Ladder 3 adds up to $5.51 an hour at the top step.
🩺 Nurse practitioners start at $67.19 an hour, about $140K a year.

The typical RN in the US earns $46.90 an hour. Every step on this scale clears that, even though Kaiser Colorado still pays well below the top California contracts. If you earn less than this, you are not behind. You are on a different contract in a different place.

Denver-area rent is the fair pushback. Map My Pay data puts average rent in Aurora at $1,689 a month, so a new Kaiser RN who rents there keeps close to $55,700 a year after taxes and rent.

Map My Pay shows your rate from your years, hours and shift, then what the paycheck leaves after rent and taxes.

Comment "MMP" to compare your pay against cost of living in any city.

10/09/2026

On October 14, about 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston are walking off the job, in the largest open-ended nurse strike in Massachusetts history.

The headlines say staffing and health costs. It's also about a Boston paycheck that doesn't go far in that city compared to others in Massachusetts.

The median Boston RN grosses $115,710 and keeps about $1,945 a month after taxes, rent, and everyday costs. Here's how that compares:

🏥 Boston, MA: grosses $115,710, about $1,945 a month left

🤠 Houston, TX: grosses $97,810, about $3,757 a month left

🏙️ Dallas, TX: grosses $98,740, about $3,591 a month left

🌵 Phoenix, AZ: grosses $98,160, about $3,337 a month left

🚗 Brockton, MA (same Boston paycheck, about 25 miles out): about $3,248 a month left

A nurse in Houston earns almost $18,000 less than a Boston nurse and keeps nearly twice as much each month. A Boston nurse who lives a little farther out, in Brockton, keeps about $1,300 more a month on the very same paycheck. This is why 4,000 nurses are choosing to be on the picket line.

Comment "BLOG" and I'll send you the full Boston breakdown.

Comment "MMP" to see what a nurse keeps in your city.

10/08/2026

10/04/2026

A typical nurse keeps the MOST money after buying a home in Alaska, AK, not in any of the famous high-pay states, and the reason flips how you should think about where to live. 🏡

I ranked every state by what an RN keeps after income taxes and a mortgage on the median home. Here is what the data showed:

🥇 Alaska, AK keeps about $57,987 a year, on no state income tax and homes a nurse can afford

💰 California, CA is 2nd at $51,332, because the pay is high enough to absorb a big mortgage

🏠 Oklahoma, OK, Louisiana, LA, and West Virginia, WV all crack the top 7, purely because homes cost under $175,000

📉 Hawaii, HI is the 5th best state to RENT in but the 48th to BUY in, because a median home runs past $840,000

🔑 West Virginia, WV jumps from 42nd on the rent list to 7th on the buy list once a cheap home shrinks the mortgage

The lesson is that a cheap home does more for what you keep than a big paycheck does, the moment you switch from renting to buying. Just remember the mortgage is only part of it, because property tax, insurance, and upkeep need to be factored in.

Comment "BLOG" and I'll send you the full state-by-state breakdown

Comment "MMP" to download our app and see what you'd keep after a mortgage in your own city

10/03/2026

A new grad nurse at El Camino Hospital starts at $89.40 an hour, about $167,357 a year on days and over $200,000 on nights.

And here's the part that's rare: in the Bay Area, that paycheck actually sticks. After taxes, rent, and everyday costs, a new grad keeps about $4,628 a month. In New York, the same six figures leaves closer to $1,085.

Here's the Clinical Nurse II scale, days:

🩺 New grad: $89.40/hr, about $167,357 a year

💉 5 years: $108.75/hr, about $203,580

🏥 10 years: $110.95/hr, about $207,698

⭐ Top of scale: $116.78/hr, about $218,612

Nights add 20 percent on top of all of it. A 10-year nurse keeps about $6,687 a month after everything. The way in is usually the per diem side door, the right job title (Clinical Nurse II), a referral, and for new grads, the residency program. Out-of-state nurses should start a California license early, because California isn't a compact state.

Comment "BLOG" and I'll send you the full El Camino guide.

Comment "MMP" to see what a nurse keeps in your city.

10/02/2026

I ranked every US city over 100,000 people by what a nurse actually keeps after taxes and rent, not the gross number on the job posting. The top spot surprised me, and the bottom one should make every nurse stop and think before they take a job in a big-name city.

Here is what the numbers showed:

💰 Vallejo, CA nurses keep the most of any city in the country, about $107,846 a year. It beats San Jose and every famous Bay Area city, because it pays nearly the same wage with rent that runs about $1,300 a month less.

🏆 California nurses take 8 of the top 10 metro areas in the US, even with the highest rent and the highest state income tax in the country. Its nurse pay is so far ahead that it still wins after the state takes its cut.

🧾 Vancouver and Tacoma, WA are the only non-California cities in the top 10, and the reason is taxes. Washington has no state income tax, so a nurse there pays about 23 percent where a California nurse pays about 34 percent.

🏙️ New York, NY nurses keep the least of any major city, just $29,856 on a six-figure salary. After the city's taxes and $4,170 a month in rent, there is almost nothing left to build on.

📍 In almost every metro area, the mid-size city next door keeps more than the more popular one. In Texas it's Pasadena, not Houston. In New York it's Buffalo, not New York City.

The city you pick decides how much of your paycheck you actually keep, and most nurses never run that math before they sign.

I broke down the full top 10, the best city in all 45 states, and what you really have left each month after rent, a car, groceries, and insurance.

Comment 'BLOG' and I will send you the full breakdown.

Comment 'MMP' to see what your own city pays and keeps.

09/30/2026

A new grad at Lenox Hill Hospital starts at $124,800 a year, and the scale climbs for 46 years.

These are the current RN wages under the New York Professional Nurses Union contract at Lenox Hill, part of Northwell Health, covering the main hospital on East 77th Street, Lenox Health Greenwich Village and Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. One scale pays all three.

These numbers are for NYPNU-represented nurses at Lenox Hill only. Other Northwell hospitals and the NYSNA hospitals across Manhattan are on their own contracts.

A new grad at Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo starts at $88,094 on a 40-hour week under its NYSNA contract. A Lenox Hill new grad starts at $124,800 on 37.5 hours. They're in the same state, but $36,706 apart before a single differential.

How Lenox Hill base pay breaks down, on a 37.5-hour week:
💵 New grad: $124,800/yr, about $64.00/hr
💵 10 years: $138,773/yr, about $71.17/hr
💵 20 years: $149,580/yr
💵 46 years: $184,159/yr, about $94.44/hr
🌙 Nights add $6,250 a year. A new grad on nights is at about $131,050, $67.21/hr.
🌙 Per diem nurses earn a flat $79.66/hr on days and $83.81/hr on nights, more than the staff rate until about 30 years in. No benefits, no guaranteed hours.

These wages are well above the roughly $91,000 the typical US nurse earns, and they are not the top of the country. Kaiser Northern California and the big California systems set that bar. A Lenox Hill new grad still earns $30,000 more than the US median.

Also, Lenox Hill counts every year of acute-care experience at hire, so a ten-year nurse arrives at the ten-year rate.

Map My Pay shows your rate from your experience, hours and shift, then what the paycheck leaves after rent and taxes.

Comment "MMP" to compare your pay against cost of living in any city.

09/28/2026

I scored all 50 states on seven things that matter to nurses, and Alabama came in dead last on almost every one.

Here is what stood out:
💸 An Alabama nurse is left with about $2,740 a month after taxes and rent. A Sacramento, CA nurse is left with about $6,048 after those same bills.

🤒 Alabama gives zero paid sick days. California gives one paid hour for every 30 you work.
👶 Alabama gives zero paid parental leave. California can reach up to 52 weeks in total.
🧑‍⚕️ Alabama puts no cap on patients per nurse. California caps it by unit.
🏥 67.6% of Alabama's rural hospitals are losing money every day.

Comment "BLOG" and I'll send you the full breakdown.
Comment "MMP" to see what your city pays.