The median advertised pay for a travel Med-Surg (medical-surgical) contract in Tennessee is $2,300 per week, with the middle half between $2,061 and $2,839. Measured across 17 active travel Med-Surg contracts in Tennessee 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 $2,179 national median for travel Med-Surg contracts.
Tennessee 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 $2,000 | 2 |
| $2,000 to $2,150 | 4 |
| $2,150 to $2,300 | 4 |
| $2,300 to $2,450 | 0 |
| $2,450 to $2,600 | 0 |
| $2,600 to $2,750 | 2 |
| $2,750 to $2,900 | 1 |
| $2,900 and up | 4 |
All 17 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Tennessee has the 38th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 8 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 21 percent under, while goods sit 4 percent under and services 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol | 3 | $2,839 | — |
| Kingsport | 3 | $3,029 | $800/mo |
| Memphis | 3 | $2,723 | $1,165/mo |
| Knoxville | 2 | $2,014 | $1,280/mo |
| Maryville | 2 | $1,955 | $1,210/mo |
| Clarksville | 1 | $2,218 | $990/mo |
| Germantown | 1 | $2,061 | $1,720/mo |
| Greeneville | 1 | $2,300 | — |
| Johnson City | 1 | $3,029 | $920/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 Tennessee.
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