New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Texas

A quarter of Texas RNs earn less than $38.06 an hour ($79,170 a year) and half earn more than $46.14. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Texas 22nd of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is spread out in Texas: $8.08 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a wider gap than in most states.

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area employs 76,680 RNs, about 28% of the state's total.

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Texas, the places they name most often are Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Katy.

The Texas Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Texas.

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

Yes, with conditions. If you are eligible, Texas posts a graduate nurse (GN) permit to your Nurse Portal within about five business days of your authorization to test. The permit and the authorization to test are valid for 75 days and cannot be extended.

Source: Texas Board of Nursing, Licensure by Examination, 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.

14,579 of the 16,454 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Texas in 2025 passed: 88.6%, 1.9 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 163 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 101 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.

Texas pays RNs more than any of its neighboring states.