Travel LPN / LVN Salary by State 2026 (Real Pay Data)

TL;DR: The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses at a national average of $32.24 an hour, $67,050 a year across 648,410 jobs. Pay for the identical license runs from $40.34 an hour in Washington to $24.74 in Mississippi, a 1.63× gap. The finding worth planning around: the three states with the most practical nurses per worker all sit in the bottom seven on pay, and the step from this license to a registered nurse is worth between 1.26× and 1.82× depending on which state you measure it in.

What These Numbers Measure

This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025, the latest one published. The line for this job is occupation code 29-2061, Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses, measured in hospitals, nursing care facilities and doctors’ offices in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

That one federal line covering both titles is the answer to the LPN-versus-LVN question that most of these pages get wrong. Licensed practical nurse and licensed vocational nurse are the same occupation in the data; California and Texas use the vocational name, and the rest of the country uses the practical one. There is no separate LVN wage series anywhere, because there is no separate LVN occupation. So the California and Texas rows below are LVN pay, and any page that quotes an LVN rate that differs from the LPN rate in the same state is not working from federal data.

What this page is not: a list of travel agency offers. No survey tags practical nurses as travel or staff, agencies do not publish their rates anywhere public, and every page that quotes a clean “travel pays this much more” percentage has made it up. You get the measured baseline, then where the travel money actually comes from, which is the reimbursement line rather than the hourly.

The baseline still decides your offer, because a recruiter prices against the facility’s own payroll. $40.34 an hour in Washington and $24.74 in Mississippi is not a difference in negotiating skill. It is this dataset.

What the State Columns Say

The ordering runs from Washington at $40.34 an hour ($83,900 a year, $1,452 on a 36-hour week) down to Mississippi at $24.74 ($51,450 a year, $891 a week). One 13-week contract at those two ends differs by $7,301 in taxable pay before a dollar of stipend, and 21 of the 51 jurisdictions clear the national average of $67,050.

• The top of this table is not the top of the nurse table. Washington leads practical nursing at $40.34, with California at $39.59 and Oregon behind that. Registered nurses are ordered differently: California is first on the nurse hub and Washington only fourth. Sorting your search by what you have heard about RN pay gets this table wrong.
• Where the license is most common, it pays least. Louisiana has the most practical nurses per 1,000 workers in the country at 9.1, and pays $27.21, rank 45 of 51. West Virginia is the second densest at 8.6 and pays $27.02, rank 47. Mississippi is the third densest and is also last on the whole table at $24.74. At the other end, Alaska is the thinnest market in the file at 0.9 per 1,000 and pays $38.46, which is fifth highest in the country. Having more licensed colleagues in your state has not bought those nurses more money.
• Big states mean more openings, not more money. California, Texas, Ohio and New York employ 34 percent of every practical nurse in the country: 82,850, 57,560, 39,900 and 39,400 jobs. Texas alone has 57,560 of them and pays $30.18 an hour, 33 of 51 on the rate.
• Small jurisdictions can flatter a state. Just 15 of the 51 have fewer than 3,000 practical nurses, down to Alaska with 290 jobs: a top-five paying state whose average rests on a handful of employers rather than a market you can job-shop in.
• Read the top-tenth column as the test for an offer. The mean is the middle of a state’s payroll. Washington puts its top tenth of practical nurses at $48.54 an hour ($100,950 a year). An hourly that clears that line puts you inside the state’s top ten percent on measured pay; one that does not means the reimbursement side is doing all the work.

What the RN License Actually Adds

Every practical nurse eventually meets the same advice: get your RN. The same release measures both jobs in every state, so the gap can be stated instead of argued. Nationally a registered nurse averages $48.76 an hour against $32.24 here, which is 1.51×.

Inside one state it is a much narrower trade than people assume:

• Smallest: Rhode Island pays an RN $48.68 an hour against $38.52 for a practical nurse: 1.26×, and that is already one of the best-paying states on this table.
• Largest: California pays an RN $72.25 an hour against $39.59: 1.82×. Same state, same hospital, and the whole gap is a nursing license.

Two readings follow, and they point the same way. The gap is smallest where practical nursing already pays comparatively well: across the ten lowest-gap states an LPN averages $33.98 an hour, against $31.74 in the ten states where the RN license adds most. And in 20 states the average practical nurse wage already beats what the bottom tenth of registered nurses earns nationally, at $33.14. The step is real money; it is not automatic, and where you take it changes the size of it.

For the neighboring roles, all measured in the same May 2025 release:

Occupation	Median per hour	Mean per hour	Against LPN pay	Top 10 percent	US jobs
Medical assistant	$21.97	$22.17	0.69×	$59,310	817,870
LPN / LVN (this page)	$30.96	$32.24	1.00×	$83,440	648,410
Surgical technologist	$31.08	$33.03	1.02×	$96,940	117,460
Radiologic technologist	$38.52	$40.31	1.25×	$118,660	230,490
Respiratory therapist	$39.56	$41.97	1.30×	$118,050	139,790
Registered nurse	$46.90	$48.76	1.51×	$137,470	3,379,720

The row worth staring at is not the registered nurse. In 25 of the 51 jurisdictions a surgical technologist (someone who holds no nursing license at all) earns a higher average wage than an LPN. Nationally the two are almost the same number: $33.03 an hour for the technologist against $32.24 here. The widest state is Minnesota, where a technologist takes $38.30 against $31.20 for the nursing license. At the other end, Maine pays its practical nurses $3.35 an hour more than the same file pays its surgical technologists. Which training route pays better is a state question, not a license question.

How a Travel LPN Package Adds Up

Two components, taxed in completely different ways:

1. Taxable hourly: your state’s figure from the table, times scheduled hours. At the national mean, a 36-hour week is $1,161 of taxable pay.
2. Non-taxable reimbursements: meals and housing up to the federal ceiling for your county and season: $68 to $92 a day for meals, $113 a night for lodging as the standard, up to $499 in the priciest listed destination. This line does not move with your hourly and does not care whether you hold a practical or a registered license, which is why two nurses at the same rate can keep very different amounts.

Worked at 36 hours a week on the costliest federal destination inside each state: a ceiling, not a likely offer:

State	Mean per hour	36-hour week	13-week taxable pay	Lodging per night	Meals per day	Stipend ceiling per week
Washington	$40.34	$1,452	$18,879	$255 in Seattle	$92	$2,429
California	$39.59	$1,425	$18,528	$325 in San Francisco	$92	$2,919
Oregon	$39.15	$1,409	$18,322	$237 in Seaside	$86	$2,261
Alabama	$26.59	$957	$12,444	$221 in Gulf Shores	$74	$2,065
South Dakota	$26.44	$952	$12,374	$173 in Rapid City	$74	$1,729
Mississippi	$24.74	$891	$11,578	$146 in Oxford	$68	$1,498

Read that last column as a maximum: it assumes a hotel at the ceiling every night and meal money all seven days, in the single costliest town in that state. Most of the map sits on the standard rate, where a full week tops out at $1,267. Its practical use is a check: when an agency’s housing line sits far below the ceiling for the town you are going to, the room to ask is measurable before you sign, and it is the same room a registered nurse gets.

Whether that reimbursement stays untaxed has nothing to do with your job title and everything to do with three tests: is per diem taxable walks them through, the per diem rates table has each destination’s ceiling, and the travel nurse paycheck calculator turns a specific offer into what reaches your bank.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which state pays travel LPNs the most?

On measured wages, Washington: $40.34 an hour, $83,900 a year, and its top tenth earns $48.54, which is also the highest top-tenth rate in the country. Its costliest listed destination, Seattle, sits at $255 a night against the $113 federal standard, so run the housing math before treating it as the answer. California is close behind at $39.59 and Oregon at $39.15.

Is LPN pay different from LVN pay?

Not in the federal data, because the two are one occupation: code 29-2061, titled Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses. California and Texas use the vocational name, and this table prices them at $39.59 and $30.18 an hour respectively. Any site quoting an LVN rate that does not match the LPN rate for the same state has not measured two things; it has invented a difference.

Is a travel LPN contract worth more than a staff job?

No dataset answers that, and you should distrust a page that claims one does. What is measurable is the shape: the hourly on a travel offer is priced against the same facility payroll this table measures, and the contract then adds expense reimbursement that staff wages do not include, so total comp can rise without the hourly moving at all.

Do travel LPNs get the same stipend as travel RNs?

The federal ceiling is set by destination, not by license level, so a practical nurse in the same town has the same lodging and meal line as a registered one. The tax tests are identical too. What differs is the hourly underneath it, which is the 1.51× covered above.

Is the RN step worth the time?

On these numbers the answer is state-specific, which is why a flat yes is useless. Nationally the license is worth 1.51×, but inside one state it ranges from 1.26× in Rhode Island to 1.82× in California, and it is worth least where practical nursing already pays comparatively well. If you earn $40.34 an hour in Washington, you are already above what the bottom tenth of registered nurses earns nationally, at $33.14.

Is this 2025 or 2026 data?

Wages are the BLS May 2025 release, the newest published; federal wage data runs about a year behind. Reimbursement ceilings are FY2027 rates, effective 1 October 2026 through 30 September 2027. Those two clocks are what make a contract straddling 1 October get measured against two different rate files.

Sources we checked

Every figure on this page came from one of the documents below, not from another blog. Links checked 10 October 2026.

• BLS OEWS wage data, interactive tables: The same May 2025 state and national estimates, filterable by occupation and area.
• BLS OEWS data tables, all releases: The May 2025 national and state release pages behind every wage line on this page.
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 state estimates: The state-by-state wage table every hourly figure on this page is read from.
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook - Licensed Practical and Vocational Nurses: The handbook line for SOC 29-2061, the one code that covers both LPN and LVN titles.