Travel Nurse Pay in Georgia (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

Travel nurse pay in Georgia: the numbers

The baseline first. Per the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), Georgia employs 100,950 registered nurses (about 3% of the nation's 3.38 million registered nurses) at a median wage of $44.98 an hour ($93,550 a year), with a mean of $95,080. The national median is $46.90 an hour ($97,550 a year), so Georgia staff RNs earn roughly 4% less than the typical U.S. nurse — but that average splits into an Atlanta metro that prices near the national median and a rural state well below it.

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. Georgia taxes wages on a graduated schedule whose top rate has been trimmed in steps in recent years and now sits around 5.2%. On a traveler's low taxable base the weekly bite runs roughly $25–30. Verify the current bracket table with the Georgia Department of Revenue before modeling an offer — the rate has moved nearly every year lately. Every dollar of wage converted into a legitimate stipend escapes that rate entirely.

The map: Atlanta is one of the largest hospital markets in the Southeast — multiple competing systems, a major academic medical center and the CDC's home ecosystem generating year-round travel volume across nearly every specialty. Augusta is the state's second healthcare hub around its academic medical complex. Savannah's coastal system, Columbus near the Alabama line and Macon round out the steady demand, and south Georgia's rural referral hospitals post the state's sharpest premiums for scarce specialties. Georgia is a Nurse Licensure Compact member (implemented January 19, 2018, per NCSBN), so a multistate RN license issued by your compact home state covers Georgia assignments. Compare Georgia 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 Georgia

Every Georgia 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. Atlanta carries a mid-to-high GSA table — the highest in Georgia; Savannah runs moderate, and the standard rate across most other counties is low, so stipend ceilings differ meaningfully between an Atlanta offer and a south Georgia one. Decide early whether to take the stipend or agency housing — in the bigger Georgia metros that choice is routinely worth several hundred dollars a week.

Illustrative contract, Atlanta: $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 Georgia tax roughly $28 a week on this base — call it about $677 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 $2,477, a blended rate near $69 an hour. A 13-week contract lands near $32,200. Run your own offer through the take-home pay calculator — this is an estimate, not tax advice.

The comparison that matters: Atlanta versus everywhere else in Georgia is nearly a two-state decision. The metro prices staff wages near the national median, carries the state's best GSA ceiling and generates the contract flow — but it also draws the deepest candidate pool in the Southeast, which holds routine med-surg rates down. South Georgia's rural referral hospitals cannot staff from their local markets at all, so they pay real premiums for ICU, L&D and cath lab. If your specialty is scarce, the small-town Georgia contract often out-earns the Atlanta one on blended rate. 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.