Neonatal nurse salary can vary depending on many factors, such as:
- Region
- Experience
- Education
- Company size
- Industry
- Skills and specialties
Nature of Work
As a neonatal nurse, you can work in a hospital like most do, or have a position in the community, providing home care. In a hospital, you can work in a Level II nursery, with less critically ill infants, or in a Level III nursery, with the most acutely ill infants.
A Level III nursery is commonly known as neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In NICU, you might care for one to four infants, and expect to work extra hard, because patients must be treated around the clock, and even on weekends and holidays.
Most neonatal nurses work 8 to 12-hour day or night shifts. If you work on nights and weekends, you will receive additional compensation.
This information should help you understand better a neonatal nurses’s nature of work, and different condition can certainly affect the salary significantly.
If you want to know a neonatal nurse salary in your region, you can contact several hospitals where you are interested in working.
Here are some statistics for neonatal nurse salary in the United States…
Neonatal Nurse Salary
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010, the lowest annual salary for registered nurses (including neonatal nurses) is $44,190 and the highest can exceed $95,000. Most registered nurses earn $67,720 every year.
We cannot retrieve the salary of neonatal nurses from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), because they present the data as a whole registered nurses. But we think neonatal nurse salary is more or less the same, unlike neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP) salary which is definitely higher.
Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP) Salary
For neonatal nurse practitioners (NNPs) with less experience, the average annual salary is $80,242. For more experienced nurses, the average annual salary is $91,000-$101,000. We collected this data from various sources and actual reports from employees in various states in 2011.
Salary by State
- Top paying states for neonatal nurse practitioners (NNP) in 2011 -
Our latest data shows thatin the United States, about 60% of NNPs work in companies with less than 500 employees, 17% in companies with 1,000-7,500 employees, and 20% in companies with more than 15,000 employees. Our record also indicates that the smaller the company size, the higher the salary tends to be.
About 13% of NNPs in the U.S. have a DNP degree and the rest have Master’s. Read also neonatal nurse practitioner programs.