To celebrate of Nurse Practitioner Week, we launched Career Navigator, the first interactive salary map for nurse practitioners by specialty and county.
We built Career Navigator using Doximity's nurse practitioner network, which includes 25% of all US nurse practitioners. With the data you provided us, we were able to analyze and find the following 5 facts on nurse practitioner salaries you may not know about:
1. Gender discrepancies exist across specialties
While 87% of nurse practitioners are female, men make 11% more than women on average. The specialty with the largest pay gap is Geriatrics, where men make about 13% more than women. The smallest pay gap exists in Acute Care, where men make 2% more than women.
2. Salary varies by specialty
The highest paid specialty overall is Psychiatric-Mental Health, with Neonatal coming in as a close second. The lowest paid specialities are Women's Health and Pediatric.
3. State salaries vary for nurse practitioners
We found the average compensation for nurse practitioners is highest in California by a significant margin. Coming in second and third place are Nevada and Oregon.
4. Independent practice states show higher salaries, but not by much
Our findings showed that nurse practitioners in the 21 states with the option of independent practicing made 4% more than their counterparts in states without independent practice options.
5. Pay for nurse practitioners is similar in rural and urban areas
We found that nurse practitioners in both rural and urban areas had relatively similar salaries, with nurse practitioners in rural areas making 1.4% more than those in urban areas. Previously, we have found that physicians in rural areas see an average of $1,500 more in salary each year compared to those in urban areas. However, we also found that PAs in urban areas make approximately 5% more than PAs in rural areas.
See what the average salary is for your specialty in your county in Career Navigator.