Travel Nurse Pay in Washington (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

Travel nurse pay in Washington: the numbers

Start with the baseline that makes everything else make sense. Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), Washington employs 69,260 registered nurses at a median wage of $59.71 an hour — $124,200 a year — with a mean of $121,540. The national median is $46.90 an hour ($97,550), which puts Washington RNs roughly 27% above it and among the highest-paid in the country. High staff wages force agencies to bid travel rates up from a high floor: a traveler in Seattle is competing against staff compensation that already clears six figures.

Two notes on those rows. The travel band is hedged market context — routine eastern-Washington openings can quote below it while Seattle ICU, NICU or oncology contracts and rapid-response extensions clear above it — but Washington's floor is genuinely the highest of the ten states in this series. The tax row is structural: the Washington Department of Revenue collects no individual income tax on wages, which is why travel contracts in Washington (with Texas and South Dakota) are famous among travelers. The state does levy a 7% excise tax on large long-term capital gains above a high six-figure inflation-adjusted threshold — irrelevant to a wage earner, but worth knowing before you hear it secondhand.

Geography splits the state in two. Seattle dominates: UW Medicine, Swedish and Providence run academic and tertiary campuses that post specialty openings year-round, in one of the most unionized nursing markets in the country. Spokane (Providence Sacred Heart, MultiCare Deaconess) anchors the east side with lower housing costs and stiff competition for contracts. Tacoma and the Puget Sound corridor sit between. Washington is a Nurse Licensure Compact member (43 jurisdictions as of late 2026, per NurseCompact), so a multistate license covers the whole state. See how it compares up and down the coast on the travel nurse pay by state hub.

How stipends change the math in Washington

Washington is the state where stipends do their most visible work, in both directions. Housing and meal stipends are tax-free only while you maintain a valid tax home and duplicated living expenses, capped by the GSA per diem tables for the assignment city — and Seattle's GSA lodging maximum runs among the highest in the nation, which permits some of the biggest compliant housing stipends anywhere. The catch: Seattle-area rents chase those same rates. A giant stipend that dies entirely in an Aurora Avenue lease is not compensation. Price the housing before you score the offer, and weigh agency housing versus the stipend carefully — in Seattle that decision is worth hundreds of dollars a week.

An illustrative Seattle contract with the state's larger stipend ceiling: $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 Washington income tax zero — roughly $705 net from the taxable side. Add a $2,000 housing stipend plus $400 meals and incidentals — untaxed with a valid tax home, sized to Seattle's federal per diem tables — and weekly take-home is about $3,100, a blended rate near $86 an hour. Thirteen weeks lands around $40,400. The same taxable wage with a standard $1,500 housing stipend in Spokane still nets about $2,600. Run your actual offer through the take-home pay calculator; this is an estimate, not tax advice.

The comparison discipline: Washington's no-tax advantage means a competing offer from a high-tax state must quote dramatically more gross to match it — the zero stacks with the biggest stipend ceiling in the country. But the housing market can claw the advantage right back, so compare after-rent, after-tax numbers, not weekly quotes. Put any two offers through the contract comparison calculator, score counters with the blended rate calculator, and keep the duplicated-expense paper trail airtight — big stipends are exactly the ones that draw audit questions. New travelers should start with the first assignment checklist.