Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: Washington, at $83,150. Tax does not change that. Best off: Alaska, at $64,566 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Washington's $83,150 median for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Alaska takes the top position at $64,566. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$64,400
People doing it
648,410
Highest paid
$83,150
WA
Best off, really
$64,566
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$49,740
Highest tenth
$83,440
Lowest, really
$46,528
MS
States with data
51
National average
$67,050
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $46,528 and $64,566. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 648,410 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $64,400. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $64,400. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $46,528 to $64,566. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- National employment in licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses is 648,410 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $49,740 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $64,400 |
| Top tenth earn over | $83,440 |
| This salary | $64,400 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
The national median for this job
$64,400around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $49,740 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $64,400 |
| Top tenth | $83,440 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $50,220 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $83,150 |
| Spread | $32,930 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $62,240 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $64,049 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $80,800 | $65,673 | $64,566 |
| NV | $76,160 | $62,409 | $64,352 |
| WA | $83,150 | $67,326 | $62,016 |
| RI | $80,090 | $62,590 | $61,718 |
| AZ | $77,070 | $61,524 | $60,852 |
| NH | $77,110 | $63,077 | $59,876 |
| ND | $62,300 | $52,238 | $58,978 |
| IL | $75,000 | $58,025 | $58,697 |
| WY | $63,460 | $53,170 | $58,526 |
| ME | $73,200 | $56,705 | $58,401 |
| IN | $65,720 | $53,077 | $57,577 |
| CO | $73,880 | $58,262 | $57,468 |
| VT | $69,930 | $55,521 | $57,454 |
| IA | $62,630 | $50,735 | $57,155 |
| MA | $80,220 | $61,574 | $56,887 |
| OR | $80,470 | $58,950 | $56,292 |
| MD | $74,660 | $58,171 | $55,952 |
| NE | $62,660 | $50,380 | $55,745 |
| ID | $63,800 | $50,915 | $55,691 |
| OH | $61,950 | $50,970 | $55,515 |
| MI | $65,460 | $52,246 | $55,472 |
| MT | $62,210 | $49,999 | $55,404 |
| CT | $73,690 | $57,368 | $55,327 |
| WI | $63,760 | $51,081 | $54,868 |
| CA | $79,750 | $61,609 | $54,725 |
| NJ | $75,160 | $59,100 | $54,279 |
| DE | $68,710 | $53,864 | $54,269 |
| NC | $63,270 | $51,002 | $54,177 |
| MO | $61,530 | $49,665 | $54,123 |
| KS | $61,760 | $48,647 | $54,073 |
| KY | $60,460 | $48,761 | $53,899 |
| SC | $61,820 | $50,069 | $53,735 |
| TX | $62,240 | $52,190 | $53,707 |
| TN | $58,870 | $49,482 | $53,485 |
| NM | $59,330 | $48,229 | $53,359 |
| LA | $57,470 | $47,019 | $53,222 |
| AR | $56,620 | $46,038 | $53,218 |
| OK | $58,320 | $46,916 | $53,141 |
| DC | $75,740 | $58,636 | $52,919 |
| PA | $63,940 | $51,593 | $52,916 |
| UT | $63,230 | $50,172 | $52,811 |
| MN | $63,750 | $50,592 | $51,405 |
| GA | $62,030 | $49,525 | $51,215 |
| VA | $64,920 | $51,371 | $50,989 |
| AL | $57,030 | $45,550 | $50,628 |
| SD | $52,750 | $44,565 | $50,587 |
| HI | $71,140 | $54,914 | $50,561 |
| WV | $55,360 | $44,991 | $50,117 |
| FL | $61,770 | $51,812 | $50,083 |
| NY | $67,180 | $53,060 | $49,301 |
| MS | $50,220 | $40,615 | $46,528 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $64,400 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $67,326.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Mississippi sits at the bottom on $46,528.
- All wage figures for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $64,400. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $67,326, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Mississippi at $46,528. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $46,528 — and the two source series are dated independently.