The median advertised pay for a travel PCU (progressive care unit) contract in Tennessee is $2,326 per week, with the middle half between $2,271 and $2,381. Measured across 6 active travel PCU contracts in Tennessee at 3 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home. With only 6 open contracts in Tennessee, treat that median as an indication rather than a rate: the contracts below are the useful part of this page.
That is 4 percent over the $2,247 national median for travel PCU contracts.
Tennessee 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 |
|---|---|
| $2,200 to $2,250 | 1 |
| $2,250 to $2,300 | 2 |
| $2,300 to $2,350 | 0 |
| $2,350 to $2,400 | 2 |
| $2,400 to $2,450 | 0 |
| $2,450 to $2,500 | 0 |
| $2,500 and up | 1 |
All 6 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Tennessee has the 38th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 8 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 21 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cookeville | 4 | $2,326 | $845/mo |
| Clarksville | 1 | $2,218 | $990/mo |
| Johnson City | 1 | $2,903 | $920/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 PCU assignments in Tennessee.
All 42 states with PCU openings