New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Florida

A quarter of Florida RNs earn less than $37.82 an hour ($78,660 a year) and half earn more than $40.48. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Florida 34th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is bunched together in Florida: only $2.66 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a narrower gap than in most states.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area employs 61,670 RNs, about 27% of the state's total.

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Florida, the places they name most often are Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Gainesville, Pensacola and Naples.

The Florida Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Florida.

Florida is in the Nurse Licensure Compact. If Florida is your primary state of residence, the license you earn after the NCLEX can be multistate, valid in every compact state. Nurses who live in another compact state can work in Florida on their home state's multistate license.

Every one of its neighboring states is in the compact too, so one license covers the whole region.

Yes, with conditions. No permit is needed. State law lets graduates practice pending the result of the first exam they are eligible for after graduating, as long as they work under the direct supervision of an RN.

Source: Florida Statutes, section 464.022(4), read October 2026. The permit makes it legal; whether you can use it depends on the employer, since not every hospital starts graduate nurses before they are licensed. Ask the recruiter.

29 of the 50 states and DC allow something like this, each with its own limits. See every state's rule.

In 2025, 17,403 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates took the NCLEX-RN for a Florida license and 81.8% passed, 4.9 points below the national rate of 86.7%. That ranks Florida 48th of the 50 states and DC.

With 143 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 122 new test takers for each one, near the national figure of about 114.

The exam is the same everywhere; the rate tells you about the graduates who tested here, not about your own chances. See pass rates in every state.

Among its neighboring states, Georgia pays RNs the most, a median of $93,550.