The median advertised pay for a travel Med-Surg (medical-surgical) contract in New York is $2,311 per week, with the middle half between $2,227 and $2,418. Measured across 22 active travel Med-Surg contracts in New York at 10 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 6 percent over the $2,182 national median for travel Med-Surg contracts.
New York is not a Nurse Licensure Compact state, so you need a New York license to work here even if you hold a multistate license. The compact state list explains which states issue one.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| $2,100 to $2,250 | 8 |
| $2,250 to $2,400 | 7 |
| $2,400 to $2,550 | 3 |
| $2,550 to $2,700 | 0 |
| $2,700 to $2,850 | 1 |
| $2,850 to $3,000 | 0 |
| $3,000 and up | 3 |
All 22 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
New York has the 5th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 8 percent over the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 22 percent over, while goods sit 7 percent over and services 4 percent over. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rochester | 14 | $2,329 | $1,090/mo |
| Geneva | 2 | $2,128 | — |
| Schenectady | 2 | $2,305 | $1,230/mo |
| Elizabethtown | 1 | $2,829 | — |
| New York | 1 | $2,194 | $2,720/mo |
| Potsdam | 1 | $3,000 | — |
| Utica | 1 | $2,324 | $980/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 Med-Surg assignments in New York.
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 Med-Surg openings