Travel Nurse Pay in Colorado (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

Travel nurse pay in Colorado: the numbers

The baseline first. Per the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), Colorado employs 54,490 registered nurses (about 1.6% of the nation's 3.38 million registered nurses) at a median wage of $48.20 an hour ($100,260 a year), with a mean of $99,370. The national median is $46.90 an hour ($97,550 a year), so Colorado staff RNs sit about 3% above the typical U.S. nurse — with a notably tight wage distribution (the state median slightly exceeds its mean, meaning pay is bunched rather than skewed by a few high earners).

Treat the travel band as hedged market context, not a quote: routine med-surg in a metro community hospital can land below it, while ICU, NICU, cath lab and L&D contracts, rural referral coverage and rapid-response extensions routinely clear the top. Colorado taxes wages at a flat rate — 4.4% for 2025 after dipping to 4.25% in 2024, per the Colorado Department of Revenue, so verify the current year's figure. On a traveler's low taxable base that is roughly $20–25 a week. The flat structure keeps modeling simple: every dollar of wage converted into a legitimate stipend saves 4.4 cents of state tax plus federal tax and FICA.

The map: Denver and Aurora form the anchor — the metro's Anschutz medical campus and competing systems generate year-round travel demand across nearly every specialty. Colorado Springs follows with strong military-adjacent and community-hospital volume. Boulder, Fort Collins and the mountain-resort corridors add smaller but premium-paying needs, where seasonal population swings and thin local labor pools push rates up each winter. Colorado is a Nurse Licensure Compact member (implemented January 19, 2018, per NCSBN), so a multistate RN license issued by your compact home state covers Colorado assignments. Compare Colorado against every other state on the travel nurse pay by state hub, and check the underlying BLS tables at bls.gov/oes.

How stipends change the math in Colorado

Every Colorado offer splits into taxable wages and tax-free stipends, and the split matters as much as the number. Housing and meal stipends stay untaxed only while you maintain a valid tax home with duplicated living expenses, and they are capped by the GSA per diem tables for your assignment city. Denver carries a moderately high GSA table; Colorado Springs and Boulder run somewhat lower, and mountain-resort counties can surprise on the upside during ski season — worth checking the per-diem tables for the exact county before comparing offers. Decide early whether to take the stipend or agency housing — in the bigger Colorado metros that choice is routinely worth several hundred dollars a week.

Illustrative contract, Denver: $23 an hour taxable times 36 guaranteed hours is $828 of weekly taxable gross. Federal income tax runs about $60 a week for a single filer after the standard deduction, FICA about $63, and Colorado's flat 4.4% tax about $24 a week on this base — call it about $681 net from the taxable side. Add $1,400 housing plus $400 meals and incidentals, untaxed with a valid tax home, and weekly take-home is roughly $2,481, a blended rate near $69 an hour. A 13-week contract lands near $32,300. Run your own offer through the take-home pay calculator — this is an estimate, not tax advice.

The comparison that matters: Colorado is a lifestyle market that still pays like a business decision. Its packages will not match the Bay Area's, but a median staff wage slightly above the national figure, a single flat tax you can compute in your head, compact licensing and GSA ceilings that genuinely cover Front Range rents make the after-tax math cleaner than in most high-demand states. The competitive pressure is real — Denver draws one of the deepest traveler candidate pools in the West — so scarce specialties and off-peak timing carry the premiums, while routine med-surg in Denver proper prices closer to the floor. Score any two offers with the contract comparison calculator or the blended rate calculator, and if this is your first contract, walk the first assignment checklist before you sign anything.