New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Indiana

A quarter of Indiana RNs earn less than $37.86 an hour ($78,750 a year) and half earn more than $40.14. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Indiana 36th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is bunched together in Indiana: only $2.28 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a narrower gap than in most states.

The largest RN job market touching Indiana is the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin area, with 100,240 RNs; that count includes nurses in Illinois.

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Indiana, the place they name most often is Indianapolis.

The Indiana State Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Indiana.

Indiana is in the Nurse Licensure Compact. If Indiana 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 Indiana on their home state's multistate license.

Of its neighboring states, Kentucky and Ohio are in the compact; Illinois and Michigan are not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. Indiana can issue a temporary registered nurse permit once you have applied for licensure by exam and the board has your materials. You practice under an RN's supervision and sign as "RNG". It lasts six months or until your first result, and ends if you do not pass.

Source: Indiana Code 25-23-1-11, 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.

3,572 of the 4,093 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Indiana in 2025 passed: 87.3%, 0.6 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

Against the 14 new-grad programs we track here, that is about 292 new test takers per program, well above the national figure of about 114. Part of that is how few programs we track here, so look at new-grad RN jobs outside residencies as well.

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, Illinois both pays RNs the most (a median of $95,990) and has the most new-grad programs on our list (84).