The distance between the lowest and highest posted pay for the same specialty is routinely two to four times the distance between specialties.
Put plainly: which unit you choose moves your pay less than which employer you sign with inside that unit.
What the postings say
These are median posted floors and ceilings from active nursing postings we track, limited to units with at least 40 priced listings. They are advertised ranges, not take-home pay.
- OR — $104,000 to $118,560 (359 postings)
- ICU — $96,408 to $114,400 (357 postings)
- ER — $93,702 to $114,353 (236 postings)
- Med-Surg — $89,107 to $113,818 (239 postings)
- Oncology — $86,986 to $120,307 (153 postings)
- Rehab — $79,040 to $95,000 (278 postings)
Read the gaps rather than the rankings. ICU's floor sits about $7,300 above med-surg's. Med-surg's own advertised band spans about $24,700, and oncology's spans about $33,300 — wide enough that a well-paid oncology posting clears the median OR ceiling, which is supposedly a higher-paying specialty entirely.
Why the spread is that wide
A posted range has to cover every nurse the employer might hire into it — a new grad and a fifteen-year veteran, a weekday day-shift line and a night rotation, a magnet academic centre and a rural hospital forty minutes away. Employers post one band that stretches across all of it. So the range is not noise around a true number. It is the employer telling you that where you land depends on things they have not written down.
Which means the useful move is not choosing the higher-paying specialty. It is finding out, before you interview, which end of the band a nurse with your experience lands on.
What to do with this
Ask the recruiter where someone with your years and certifications sits inside the posted range, and ask what specifically moves a candidate up it. If the answer is vague, that vagueness is itself information. Compare two postings in the same specialty before you compare across specialties — the within-specialty decision is where the larger money is.
Run your number
Base only — before differentials and bonuses.
Three 12s is 36. Overtime is optional — leave it out.
Blended nights/weekend premium across your real schedule.
One-time — we keep it separate from your rate.
100 = national average. Cost index: BEA 2024 Regional Price Parities.
Annualized base pay
$74,880
Guaranteed hours only, no overtime.
In national dollars (cost-of-living adjusted)
$74,880
Same as face value at national-average cost.
- National mean
- $101,420
- National mean · BLS OEWS, May 2025
- Posted median right now
- $98,800
- Posted median right now · 3,845 postings
- Gap vs benchmark, adjusted
- −26%
- vs. national mean, adjusted
Sources
- Median posted floors and ceilings, active nursing postings in the Nursing Mastery job corpus, units with 40+ priced listings, read 30 July 2026.
- Figures are advertised salary ranges from employer postings, not reported earnings. Postings whose salary fields fall outside a $40,000–$300,000 annual band are excluded, because the source data mixes annual, hourly, and cents-denominated values.
- Live pay for any specific role appears in the open-roles module below, drawn from the same corpus.
See the bands
Median posted floor and ceiling · units with 40+ priced listings · Nursing Mastery job corpus, read 30 July 2026.
See the data
The band inside a specialty is wider than the gap between them.
Median posted floor and ceiling by unit, active postings with 40+ priced listings.
ICU outpays Med-Surg by about $7,300 at the floor. Med-Surg’s own posted band spans about $24,700 — more than three times that gap.
