The median advertised pay for a travel NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) contract in New Jersey is $2,714 per week, with the middle half between $2,707 and $2,816. Measured across 5 active travel NICU contracts in New Jersey at 4 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home. With only 5 open contracts in New Jersey, treat that median as an indication rather than a rate: the contracts below are the useful part of this page.
That is 8 percent over the $2,510 national median for travel NICU contracts.
New Jersey 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 $2,250 | 0 |
| $2,250 to $2,400 | 0 |
| $2,400 to $2,550 | 0 |
| $2,550 to $2,700 | 0 |
| $2,700 to $2,850 | 3 |
| $2,850 to $3,000 | 1 |
All 5 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
New Jersey has the 4th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 9 percent over the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 34 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Livingston | 2 | $2,863 | $2,650/mo |
| New Brunswick | 1 | $2,707 | $1,630/mo |
| Newark | 1 | $2,714 | $1,940/mo |
| Westwood | 1 | $1,775 | — |
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 NICU assignments in New Jersey.
All 29 states with NICU openings