The median advertised pay for a travel OR (operating room) contract in North Carolina is $3,319 per week, with the middle half between $2,291 and $3,323. Measured across 11 active travel OR contracts in North Carolina at 7 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 28 percent over the $2,590 national median for travel OR contracts.
North Carolina 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 |
|---|---|
| $1,900 to $2,150 | 3 |
| $2,150 to $2,400 | 0 |
| $2,400 to $2,650 | 2 |
| $2,650 to $2,900 | 0 |
| $2,900 to $3,150 | 0 |
| $3,150 to $3,400 | 6 |
All 11 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
North Carolina has the 31th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 6 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 19 percent under, while goods sit 3 percent under and services 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raleigh | 4 | $3,352 | $1,640/mo |
| Greenville | 2 | $3,323 | $890/mo |
| Concord | 1 | $1,963 | $1,455/mo |
| Hickory | 1 | $1,906 | $910/mo |
| Kenansville | 1 | $2,482 | — |
| Washington | 1 | $2,100 | — |
| Winston Salem | 1 | $2,575 | — |
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 North Carolina.
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