The median advertised pay for a travel OR (operating room) contract in Iowa is $2,459 per week, with the middle half between $2,452 and $2,722. Measured across 8 active travel OR contracts in Iowa at 3 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home. With only 8 open contracts in Iowa, treat that median as an indication rather than a rate: the contracts below are the useful part of this page.
That is 5 percent under the $2,590 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.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| $2,400 to $2,450 | 1 |
| $2,450 to $2,500 | 4 |
| $2,500 to $2,550 | 0 |
| $2,550 to $2,600 | 0 |
| $2,600 to $2,650 | 0 |
| $2,650 to $2,700 | 0 |
| $2,700 and up | 3 |
All 8 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Des Moines | 4 | $2,722 | $965/mo |
| Cedar Rapids | 3 | $2,452 | $750/mo |
| Mason City | 1 | $2,402 | — |
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 44 states with OR openings