Methodology
This page states plainly where every number on this site comes from. Some of our figures are computed from published government sources and carry a citation. Others are our own editorial estimates. We think you are entitled to know which is which before you make a decision about a contract.
The short version
Our tax calculations are sourced. Federal brackets, the standard deduction, FICA and self-employment tax all come from IRS and SSA publications, and the build refuses to ship if any of those figures loses its citation.
Our pay, rent and cost-of-living figures are not. They are estimates our editors maintain. They are useful for orientation and comparison, and they are not measured data. Do not cite them as a statistic, and do not treat a difference of a dollar or two between two places as meaningful.
Computed from published sources
Each of these carries a source, a source URL and a retrieval date in our repository. A build-time check fails the deploy if any is missing, malformed, or produces a tax rate above what the published brackets allow.
| Figure | Source | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|
| Federal income tax brackets and standard deduction | IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 (Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025-45), .01 Tax Rate Tables and .02 Standard Deduction | July 31, 2026 |
| Social Security, Medicare and Additional Medicare (FICA) | Social Security Administration, Contribution and Benefit Base; IRS Tax Topic 751 (Social Security and Medicare withholding rates) | July 31, 2026 |
| States with no wage income tax | Tax Foundation, State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets | July 31, 2026 |
| Self-employment tax and Section 199A | IRS Topic No. 554 (Self-Employment Tax); IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (IRB 2025-45) for the Section 199A thresholds; IRS Notice 2025-67 for the elective deferral limit | July 31, 2026 |
State income tax is deliberately incomplete. We compute it only where we have verified that a state levies no wage income tax. Everywhere else we withhold the figure instead of estimating it, which is why some combinations show a dash rather than a net pay amount.
Our own editorial estimates
The figures below are produced by us. They are informed by published job postings, agency pay ranges, and the per diem and cost data we track, but they are not the output of a survey or a wage dataset, and no external body stands behind them.
State pay, cost of living, licensing
Reviewed July 31, 2026- averagePay.hourly
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE. A whole-dollar figure set by our editors as a representative taxable hourly rate for a travel RN contract in this state. It is not measured, surveyed, or drawn from an external wage dataset.
- averagePay.weekly
- — DERIVED: averagePay.hourly x hoursPerWeekBasis.
- averagePay.annual
- — DERIVED: averagePay.hourly x hoursPerWeekBasis x 52.
- costOfLiving.index
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE. Relative cost index, 100 = national average. Not sourced from an external index.
- costOfLiving.averageRent
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE of typical asking rent. Not sourced from HUD Fair Market Rents or a listings dataset.
- gsaRates
- — SUPERSEDED AND NOT a GSA figure. GSA publishes per diem by locality and a CONUS standard; it does not publish per-state rates. Real per diem now lives in src/data/gsa/ and is read via src/utils/perDiem.js — use stateCeiling() for a state-level range. This field is retained only until the remaining display templates are migrated off it.
- licensing.licenseCost
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE of initial RN licensure cost. Board fees change; verify with the state board.
- taxInfo.stateTaxRate
- — UNSOURCED AND UNUSED. Retained only to avoid a breaking schema change. The tax engine ignores this field entirely; see src/data/tax/ and hasNoWageIncomeTax(). Never render or compute with it.
City pay, cost of living, per diem
Reviewed July 31, 2026- averagePay.hourly
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE. Representative taxable hourly rate for a travel RN contract in this city. Not measured or surveyed.
- averagePay.weekly
- — DERIVED: averagePay.hourly x hoursPerWeekBasis.
- averagePay.annual
- — DERIVED: averagePay.hourly x hoursPerWeekBasis x 52.
- costOfLiving.index
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE. 100 = national average.
- costOfLiving.averageRent
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE of typical asking rent, reviewed periodically. Not HUD Fair Market Rents.
- gsaRates
- — SUPERSEDED. Hand-authored and not GSA data: only 15 of 219 lodging values matched GSA (median error $16/night, worst $212) and none of the 219 meals values was a valid GSA M&IE tier. Real per diem now lives in src/data/gsa/ and is read via src/utils/perDiem.js. Retained only until the remaining display templates are migrated off it.
Specialty pay
Reviewed July 31, 2026- averagePay.hourly
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE of a representative national taxable hourly rate for this specialty.
- averagePay.weekly
- — DERIVED: averagePay.hourly x hoursPerWeekBasis.
- averagePay.annual
- — DERIVED: averagePay.hourly x hoursPerWeekBasis x 52.
Allied health pay
Reviewed July 31, 2026- pay
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE. Not drawn from an external wage dataset.
Agency profiles and ratings
Reviewed July 31, 2026- payRange
- — INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE of typical advertised pay range.
- rating
- — OUR OWN EDITORIAL RATING based on published pay ranges, benefits and transparency. Not an average of traveler reviews and not a user rating.
Hospital profiles
Reviewed July 31, 2026- *
- — Descriptive hospital information compiled editorially from public hospital and health-system pages. Any pay figure is an INTERNAL EDITORIAL ESTIMATE.
How weekly and annual pay are derived
Where we show a weekly or annual figure alongside an hourly rate, the weekly figure is the hourly rate multiplied by 40 hours, and the annual figure is that weekly amount times 52. Most travel contracts are written at 36 hours, and very few travellers work 52 weeks a year, so treat the annual number as a full-time-equivalent comparison rather than a forecast of what you will earn. Our calculators let you set your own hours and contract length, and you should use those for any real decision.
Stipends are not wages. Where a figure separates taxable pay from stipends, only the taxable portion is run through the tax engine.
What we will not do
- •Publish testimonials, ratings or review counts we did not receive.
- •Show crowdsourced pay for a segment until we have at least 30 real submissions for it.
- •Fill a gap in tax data with a plausible-looking rate. If we cannot source it, we withhold it.
- •Present an editorial estimate as a survey result, an official figure, or a citable statistic.
Open work
We would rather these estimates were sourced, and we are working toward that. Outstanding: ingesting per diem rates directly from the GSA API at locality level, replacing our rent estimates with HUD Fair Market Rents, adding sourced state income tax schedules so net pay resolves everywhere, and anchoring pay figures to published wage data. This page will be updated as each lands.
Questions
Are your pay figures survey data?
No. Our state, city and specialty pay figures are internal editorial estimates. They are not survey results, agency-reported rates, or government wage statistics. We label them as estimates wherever they appear and we ask that they not be cited as a data source.
Which numbers on the site are from a published source?
The tax engine. Federal brackets and the standard deduction come from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, FICA rates and the Social Security wage base from the SSA and IRS Topic 751, self-employment tax from IRS Topic 554, and the Section 199A thresholds from Rev. Proc. 2025-32. Every one of those figures carries a source URL and a retrieval date in our data files, and the build fails if any of them is missing.
Why do you withhold after-tax pay for some states?
Because we do not yet have a sourced bracket schedule for every state, and both your home state and your assignment state can tax the same income. If either state is one we have not sourced, we show you the federal and FICA figures and withhold the net rather than guess. Understating your tax would be as harmful as overstating it.
How often is this reviewed?
Our editorial estimates were last reviewed July 31, 2026. Tax data is refreshed when the IRS and SSA publish new figures, normally in the autumn for the following tax year. Per diem rates change each federal fiscal year on 1 October.
Found something wrong?
If a figure here does not match what you are being offered, we want to know. Corrections from working travellers are the fastest way this data improves.
Tell us about a discrepancy →