Everything travel nurses need to know about travel nursing pay, including negotiating, evaluating, and comparing travel nursing pay packages, and tax free money. There are over 60 articles in this blog category!

Travel Nursing Pay – Choosing Between Guaranteed Hours or a Higher Rate

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We recently communicated with a travel nurse whose agency offered her a choice between guaranteed hours or a higher pay rate. This choice had her, and many other travel nurses, perplexed. In fact, it even had many experienced recruiters perplexed. After all, guaranteed hours is a straightforward concept, isn’t it? Actually, in recent years the issue has become a bit more complex. In this blog post, we’ll provide some background on the topic and examine this choice between guaranteed hours or a higher rate. Read more

Travel Nursing Pay: Why Don’t Agencies Divulge the Bill Rate?

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Travel nurses negotiate new pay packages much more frequently than the average professional. This is because travel nursing jobs are short-term, each contract is different, and each agency has its own way of doing things. Therefore, it’s important for travel nurses to know that the the “bill rate” for a travel nursing job is perhaps the single most important variable in determining a pay package. Read more

Travel Nursing Pay: Flexible vs. Rigid

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If you’ve discussed travel nursing pay with multiple agencies, then you’ve most certainly found that different agencies compensate their travel nurses in different ways. Some companies pay larger tax-free stipends than others. Some companies offer rental cars while others don’t. Some companies offer furnished one bedroom apartments while others will only offer an Extended Stay hotel.

The various individual differences can be difficult to keep track of. However, there are a couple of general differences that travel nurses should be acutely aware of. We’re going to discuss one of those general differences here, the difference between flexible compensation packages and rigid compensation packages. Read more

What Every Travel Nurse Should Know About Negotiating with Bottom Lines

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One of the top advantages of travel nursing cited by both travel nurses and agencies is the pay. It’s true that travel nursing pay packages are higher than permanent pay packages in many cases. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, travel nursing compensation packages aren’t all that lucrative.

As a result, many travel nurses maintain “bottom line” requirements. If assignments don’t meet the compensation requirements, then they are passed over until an assignment that meets the requirements is offered. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some considerations for adopting this strategy and some of its advantages and disadvantages. Read more

Travel Nursing Pay: Overtime Bill Rates

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As we’ve noted time and again on this blog, bill rates are the single most important variable in determining travel nursing pay. The bill rate is the hourly rate that agencies can charge their client hospitals for the travel nurse’s time.

There are many different categories of bill rates. The overtime category is one of the more complicated bill rate categories and we’ll cover it in detail here. Understanding the issues at play with overtime bill rates will help travel nurses understand the limitations faced by agencies when determining “extra hours” pay which will help travel nurses with their compensation negotiations. Read more