New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in North Dakota

A quarter of North Dakota RNs earn less than $33.47 an hour ($69,620 a year) and half earn more than $38.81. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts North Dakota 43rd of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

$5.34 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median here, close to the typical gap across the states.

The largest RN job market touching North Dakota is the Fargo area, with 4,790 RNs; that count includes nurses in Minnesota.

The North Dakota Board of Nursing licenses RNs in North Dakota.

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

Of its neighboring states, Montana and South Dakota are in the compact; Minnesota is not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. North Dakota can give a Work Authorization once your application, fee, transcript and NCLEX registration are approved, if you applied within 60 days of graduating. You work only in North Dakota, under an RN's supervision, as a "Graduate Nurse". It ends 90 days after issue or when your result arrives.

Source: North Dakota Board of Nursing, Guidelines for Employment of Graduate Nurses before Licensure, 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.

North Dakota had one of the highest first-time NCLEX-RN pass rates in the country in 2025: 92.9% of the 647 U.S.-educated candidates who tested for a North Dakota license passed, 6.2 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

Set against the 13 new-grad programs we track here, that is about 50 new test takers per program, fewer than 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, Minnesota both pays RNs the most (a median of $101,510) and has the most new-grad programs on our list (33).