New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Kansas

A quarter of Kansas RNs earn less than $35.24 an hour ($73,300 a year) and half earn more than $38.14. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Kansas 46th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is bunched together in Kansas: only $2.90 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a narrower gap than in most states.

The largest RN job market touching Kansas is the Kansas City area, with 29,650 RNs; that count includes nurses in Missouri.

The Kansas State Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Kansas.

Kansas is in the Nurse Licensure Compact. If Kansas 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 Kansas 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.

Kansas law allows a temporary permit of up to 120 days and names graduates of nursing schools abroad, but it does not set one out for new US graduates. Ask the Kansas board before you plan on working before the NCLEX.

What we read: Kansas Statutes, K.S.A. 65-1115, October 2026.

29 of the 50 states and DC do allow it in some form. See every state's rule.

1,625 of the 1,804 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Kansas in 2025 passed: 90.1%, 3.4 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 14 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 129 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, Colorado pays RNs the most, a median of $100,260. Missouri has the most new-grad programs on our list (32).