The median advertised pay for a travel ICU (intensive care unit) contract in Texas is $1,849 per week, with the middle half between $1,830 and $2,396. Measured across 14 active travel ICU contracts in Texas at 9 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 21 percent under the $2,325 national median for travel ICU contracts.
Texas 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 $1,600 | 1 |
| $1,600 to $1,800 | 2 |
| $1,800 to $2,000 | 5 |
| $2,000 to $2,200 | 1 |
| $2,200 to $2,400 | 1 |
| $2,400 to $2,600 | 2 |
| $2,600 to $2,800 | 2 |
All 14 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Texas has the 25th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 3 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 3 percent under, while goods sit 2 percent under and services 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler | 4 | $2,145 | $1,080/mo |
| Athens | 2 | $1,672 | — |
| Houston | 2 | $1,830 | $1,250/mo |
| Abilene | 1 | $2,029 | $940/mo |
| Dallas | 1 | $1,866 | $1,530/mo |
| Odessa | 1 | $2,788 | $1,300/mo |
| Round Rock | 1 | $1,572 | $1,850/mo |
| San Angelo | 1 | $2,756 | $1,005/mo |
| Wichita Falls | 1 | $2,208 | $885/mo |
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 ICU assignments in Texas.
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 ICU openings