The median advertised pay for a travel ER (emergency room) contract in Iowa is $2,216 per week, with the middle half between $2,167 and $2,250. Measured across 19 active travel ER contracts in Iowa at 10 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 2 percent under the $2,256 national median for travel ER contracts.
Iowa is a Nurse Licensure Compact state, so an active multistate license covers you here. A single-state license from elsewhere does not. The compact state list explains which states issue one.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| Under $2,100 | 1 |
| $2,100 to $2,150 | 0 |
| $2,150 to $2,200 | 8 |
| $2,200 to $2,250 | 5 |
| $2,250 to $2,300 | 4 |
| $2,300 to $2,350 | 1 |
| $2,350 to $2,400 | 0 |
All 19 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Iowa has the 49th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 12 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 35 percent under, while goods sit 6 percent under and services 7 percent under. That matters more than the headline number, because housing is the part a tax-free stipend is meant to cover and the rest comes out of taxed wages.
| Metro | Open contracts | Median weekly | Rent, 1 bed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Des Moines | 6 | $2,243 | $965/mo |
| Waterloo | 3 | $2,192 | $750/mo |
| Clinton | 2 | $2,167 | — |
| Dyersville | 2 | $2,167 | — |
| Cedar Rapids | 1 | $2,334 | $750/mo |
| Greenfield | 1 | $2,216 | — |
| Marshalltown | 1 | $2,064 | $730/mo |
| Mason City | 1 | $2,165 | — |
| Mount Pleasant | 1 | $2,196 | — |
| Shenandoah | 1 | $2,270 | — |
Rent is the one-bedroom Fair Market Rent HUD publishes for that metro, which is what a housing stipend is trying to cover. The open-contract count beside each metro is the sample its median rests on, and outside the largest markets that sample is small: a median over one or two contracts is a single posting's rate rather than a market rate, so read the count first.
Browse the board for current ER assignments in Iowa.
Drawn from the postings that state a requirement, which is not all of them, so each figure carries the number it was measured from. Your recruiter confirms the specifics for a given contract before submission.
All 46 states with ER openings