New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Missouri

A quarter of Missouri RNs earn less than $36.56 an hour ($76,050 a year) and half earn more than $39.32. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Missouri 40th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is bunched together in Missouri: only $2.76 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a narrower gap than in most states.

The largest RN job market touching Missouri is the St. Louis area, with 35,200 RNs; that count includes nurses in Illinois.

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

The Missouri State Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Missouri.

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

Of its neighboring states, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Tennessee are in the compact; Illinois is not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. No permit is needed. State law lets graduates of accredited programs practice under proper supervision until the result of their first licensing exam or 90 days after graduation, whichever comes first.

Source: Revised Statutes of Missouri, section 335.081, 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.

3,246 of the 3,661 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Missouri in 2025 passed: 88.7%, 2.0 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 32 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 114 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, Illinois both pays RNs the most (a median of $95,990) and has the most new-grad programs on our list (84).