Travel nurse income, and employment for those in the industry, is expected to be “pretty steady” in the coming years, according to Luminous Travel Staffing Co-Founder Alysia Adams, DNP, APRN, AGACNP-BC, CCRN, NE-BC.
She said healthcare companies have issued raises and taken other approaches to “mitigate the amount of contract labor and core staff,” noting the national media attention that travel nursing received during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“But that was a pandemic,” she said. “You had unexpected illnesses all across the country, various ages that were affected, so the healthcare systems did have to meet the demand.”
That timeframe “really raised all of the rates,” according to Adams, and they are now starting to level out.
“You’re not seeing the huge increases in rates,” she said, “not seeing huge increases in core salary dollars, so we’re really seeing a stabilization of that. I think rates will rise a little bit in the coming times just because … we have more jobs than we have staff, so you’re back to that supply and demand mismatch.”
Boutique staffing agencies like Luminous Travel Staffing are available to help nurses navigate conversations about salary heading into 2025 and ensure a travel nurse income that’s in line with their skills and experience.
Past Travel Nurse Income
The highest annual salary for a travel nurse in 2024 was nearly $115,000, according to the most recently available ZipRecruiter data, and the lowest was roughly $75,000. Indeed salary information, updated in early December, reflected similar compensation.
Kevin Levu, a travel nurse who made the jump in 2020, told CNBC that he doubled his income from 2023 to 2024 with a travel assignment at a county prison.
The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses’ (AORN) 2024 salary survey, which focuses on periop nurse salaries, found that “all nurses received a modest pay bump in 2024,” but also that travel nurse use declines from 63% in 2023 to 55% in 2024.
Travel nurse income data compiled by Zippia, a job search website, found that assignments in Hawaii offer the highest salary at $124,372. But the most popular locations were in San Diego, California, and Boca Raton, Florida.
What to Expect in 2025
Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) reported that during its November healthcare staffing summit, outlooks on the market for 2025 varied.
“Anecdotally, some large healthcare staffing firms were more restrained in their revenue projections, while some smaller firms were more optimistic, with some already reporting increases in revenue — specifically in hard to fill specialties such as ER, ICU and telemetry,” Crystal Fullilove reported.
SIA initially projected 5% growth for travel staffing in the coming year, spurred by improvements during the back half of 2024. However, the outlet recently reported that “travel nurse volumes and bill rates have remained subdued” and the increase “failed to materialize.”
But from the boutique perspective, Adams and Luminous Travel Staffing have no concerns about helping healthcare professionals land the travel job of their dreams.
“As far as job security, I don’t know a nurse or an allied health professional or a provider that is going to be struggling to have job security whether they’re in the travel market or not,” Adams said.
The Bottom Line
Travel nurse income experienced a boom during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rates have begun to stabilize, and that’s expected to continue into 2025. However, boutique travel staffing agencies like Luminous Travel Staffing don’t anticipate much of a slowdown in securing jobs for travel health professionals. That’s in line with a Staffing Industry Analysts report that found, anecdotally, that boutique agencies were more optimistic than larger organizations.
Check out the Luminous job board today.