New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Maryland

A quarter of Maryland RNs earn less than $40.26 an hour ($83,740 a year) and half earn more than $47.98. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Maryland 15th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is spread out in Maryland: $7.72 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a wider gap than in most states.

The largest RN job market touching Maryland is the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington area, with 73,790 RNs; that count includes nurses in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Maryland, the places they name most often are Baltimore, Columbia, Rockville, Frederick, Annapolis and Silver Spring.

The Maryland Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Maryland.

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

Of its neighboring states, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia are in the compact; Washington, DC is not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. No permit is issued. With a license application pending, you can work as a nursing graduate (NG) under an RN who is physically present on the unit, for up to 120 days after you applied. You must stop at once if you fail the NCLEX a second time.

Source: Code of Maryland Regulations 10.27.01.03, 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.

2,501 of the 2,856 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Maryland in 2025 passed: 87.6%, 0.9 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 26 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 110 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, Washington, DC pays RNs the most, a median of $102,540. Pennsylvania has the most new-grad programs on our list (62).