The median advertised pay for a travel OR (operating room) contract in Iowa is $2,749 per week, with the middle half between $2,412 and $2,831. Measured across 7 active travel OR contracts in Iowa at 5 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 over the $2,669 national median for travel OR contracts.
Iowa 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 |
|---|---|
| Under $2,300 | 1 |
| $2,300 to $2,400 | 0 |
| $2,400 to $2,500 | 2 |
| $2,500 to $2,600 | 0 |
| $2,600 to $2,700 | 0 |
| $2,700 to $2,800 | 1 |
| $2,800 to $2,900 | 2 |
| $2,900 and up | 1 |
All 7 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Iowa has the 49th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 12 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 35 percent under, while goods sit 6 percent under and services 7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cedar Rapids | 2 | $2,952 | $750/mo |
| Mason City | 2 | $2,576 | — |
| Des Moines | 1 | $2,828 | $965/mo |
| Dubuque | 1 | $2,169 | $760/mo |
| West Des Moines | 1 | $2,421 | $1,110/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 OR assignments in Iowa.
All 47 states with OR openings