The median advertised pay for a travel PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) contract in Missouri is $2,540 per week, with the middle half between $2,530 and $2,750. Measured across 4 active travel PICU contracts in Missouri at 2 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. With only 4 open contracts in Missouri, treat that median as an indication rather than a rate: the contracts below are the useful part of this page.
That is 6 percent under the $2,707 national median for travel PICU 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, and the compact checker tells you whether yours covers you here.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| $2,500 to $2,600 | 3 |
| $2,600 to $2,700 | 0 |
| $2,700 to $2,800 | 0 |
| $2,800 to $2,900 | 0 |
| $2,900 to $3,000 | 0 |
| $3,000 to $3,100 | 0 |
| $3,100 and up | 1 |
All 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia | 2 | $2,530 | $865/mo |
| Kansas City | 2 | $2,948 | $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 PICU assignments in Missouri.
All 27 states with PICU openings