Nursing & Healthcare News
Why Nurses are Coming to California
Staffing ratio mandates and high salaries lead the nation
While living in California can have its downsides (gas prices, for one!), nurses in the Golden State enjoy advantages no other state can match.
California Dreamin’
It’s no secret that California’s cost of living is high. On the other hand, when it comes to salaries, California has a commanding edge over every other state.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California RNs’ average wage in 2022 was $64.10 an hour, and nurses in some areas averaged almost $80 an hour.
Those figures are much higher than the national average — in fact, nurses in some other states make less than half what their California counterparts do. Average wages for Arkansas and South Dakota nurses, for example, were less than $32 an hour in 2022.