The median advertised pay for a travel OR (operating room) contract in Missouri is $2,787 per week, with the middle half between $2,607 and $3,030. Measured across 16 active travel OR contracts in Missouri at 9 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 7 percent over the $2,601 national median for travel OR contracts.
Missouri 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 |
|---|---|
| $2,500 to $2,600 | 4 |
| $2,600 to $2,700 | 4 |
| $2,700 to $2,800 | 0 |
| $2,800 to $2,900 | 2 |
| $2,900 to $3,000 | 0 |
| $3,000 to $3,100 | 3 |
| $3,100 and up | 3 |
All 16 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Missouri has the 39th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 9 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 30 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis | 8 | $2,954 | — |
| Columbia | 2 | $2,696 | $865/mo |
| Fairfax | 2 | $2,558 | — |
| Cape Girardeau | 1 | $3,223 | $800/mo |
| Clinton | 1 | $2,524 | — |
| Creve Coeur | 1 | $2,887 | $1,320/mo |
| Kansas City | 1 | $3,007 | $1,220/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 Missouri.
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 44 states with OR openings