The median advertised pay for a travel Med-Surg (medical-surgical) contract in Kentucky is $2,167 per week, with the middle half between $2,119 and $2,199. Measured across 10 active travel Med-Surg contracts in Kentucky at 4 facilities, as of 2026-10-31.
Advertised weekly totals before tax, usually including tax-free stipends; for almost all postings the top of an advertised range. Not take-home.
That is 3 percent under the $2,224 national median for travel Med-Surg contracts.
Kentucky 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, and the compact checker tells you whether yours covers you here.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| $2,000 to $2,050 | 2 |
| $2,050 to $2,100 | 0 |
| $2,100 to $2,150 | 1 |
| $2,150 to $2,200 | 5 |
| $2,200 to $2,250 | 1 |
| $2,250 to $2,300 | 0 |
| $2,300 and up | 1 |
All 10 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Kentucky has the 40th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 10 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 36 percent under, while goods sit 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bowling Green | 7 | $2,162 | $925/mo |
| Lexington | 2 | $2,103 | $1,060/mo |
| Hazard | 1 | $2,330 | — |
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 Med-Surg assignments in Kentucky.
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 49 states with Med-Surg openings