The median advertised pay for a travel NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) contract in Texas is $2,051 per week, with the middle half between $2,038 and $2,070. Measured across 4 active travel NICU contracts in Texas at 3 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home. With only 4 open contracts in Texas, treat that median as an indication rather than a rate: the contracts below are the useful part of this page.
That is 18 percent under the $2,509 national median for travel NICU 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 |
|---|---|
| $2,000 to $2,050 | 1 |
| $2,050 to $2,100 | 2 |
| $2,100 to $2,150 | 1 |
| $2,150 to $2,200 | 0 |
| $2,200 to $2,250 | 0 |
| $2,250 to $2,300 | 0 |
All 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lubbock | 2 | $2,051 | $1,010/mo |
| Dallas | 1 | $2,129 | $1,530/mo |
| Fort Worth | 1 | $2,001 | $1,430/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 NICU assignments in Texas.
All 29 states with NICU openings