It doesn’t matter if you are looking for a job as travel nurse, office nurse, hospital nurse or any other nursing job, you can find it anywhere in the United States.

A nursing job as travel nurse requires a Registered Nursing degree which you can get from the nursing school. To give you some information where you can find the most nursing jobs, we give you the employment-statistics of the top 20 of the most populated areas of registered nurses.

Top 20 of the most populated areas for registered nurses

Rank	Area	Employed	Total Population
1	New York, NY	69,600 nurses	7,325,000
2	LA to Long Beach, CA	53,500 nurses	5,530,000
3	Chicago, IL	51,300 nurses	2,794,000
4	Philadelphia, PA-NJ	49,100 nurses	1,596,000
5	Boston, MA	33,000 nurses	574,000
6	Detroit, MI	33,000 nurses	1,016,000
7	Washington DC, MD-VA	32,000 nurses	610,000
8	Nassau-Suffolk, NY	25,000 nurses	1,322,000
9	Minneapolis, MN	24,000 nurses	369,000
10	Baltimore, MD	23,000 nurses	736,000
11	Pittsburgh, PA	23,000 nurses	370,000
12	Houston, TX	22,000 nurses	1,631,000
13	St. Louis, MO-KS	22,000 nurses	397,000
14	Atlanta, GA	21,000 nurses	394,000
15	Cleveland, OH	17,500 nurses	560,000
16	Anaheim-Santa Ana, CA	17,000 nurses	600,000
17	San Diego, CA	17,000 nurses	1,111,000
18	Phoenix, AZ	17,000 nurses	984,000
19	Tampa - St. Pete, FL	17,000 nurses	600,000
20	Seattle, WA	17,000 nurses	516,000

Top 20 Most Populated Areas Registered Nurses

The graphic on the left will show you the differences between the employment numbers in all the areas. You can have a better look on the difference between the number 1 area – New York (orange) - and the lower ranking numbers.

Average Starting Hourly Base Salary

The shortage of nursing has lead to problems in the nursing sector. But one of the positive things of this shortage, are the increasing salaries for the nurses. The average starting hourly base salary registered nurses has increased from 2003 to 2004. First they earned about $18.49 per hour and in 2004 it increased with $0.84 (=5%) to $19.33.

Average Hourly Pay by Specialty

Specialty	Average Hourly Pay
Emergency	$18.75
Medicine / Surgery	$18.80
OR	$19.75
Critical Care	$19.45

As you can see at the statistics, the nursing jobs have an acceptable wage average. Nowadays there will be no problem to study nursing at a college. Most nursing schools accept as many students as they can, because of the shortage in the nursing sector. To fill the need of the nurses, some schools even have the possibility to combine a nursing job at the same time as your study at the nursing school.

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