New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Pennsylvania

A quarter of Pennsylvania RNs earn less than $38.75 an hour ($80,610 a year) and half earn more than $46.36. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Pennsylvania 20th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is spread out in Pennsylvania: $7.61 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a wider gap than in most states.

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

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Pennsylvania, the places they name most often are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, York and Erie.

The Pennsylvania State Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Pennsylvania.

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

Of its neighboring states, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio and West Virginia are in the compact; New York is not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. Pennsylvania grants a temporary practice permit to a graduate registered nurse who applies for it. You practice only with a licensed RN physically present on your unit. It lasts up to one year and ends at once if you fail the exam, and you must apply for the exam at least 90 days before it expires.

Source: Pennsylvania Code, 49 Pa. Code section 21.7, 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.

Pennsylvania had one of the highest first-time NCLEX-RN pass rates in the country in 2025: 90.4% of the 7,742 U.S.-educated candidates who tested for a Pennsylvania license passed, 3.7 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 62 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 125 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, New York pays RNs the most, a median of $109,440. Ohio has the most new-grad programs on our list (67).