New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Vermont

A quarter of Vermont RNs earn less than $39.53 an hour ($82,210 a year) and half earn more than $46.86. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Vermont 19th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is spread out in Vermont: $7.33 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a wider gap than in most states.

The Burlington-South Burlington area employs 3,150 RNs, about 43% of the state's total.

The Vermont State Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Vermont.

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

Of its neighboring states, New Hampshire is in the compact; Massachusetts and New York are not, so working there means a separate license.

We could not confirm from an official Vermont source whether new graduates can work before passing the NCLEX. Ask Vermont's Office of Professional Regulation before you plan on it.

The Vermont State Board of Nursing can tell you; its contact details are on NCSBN's page for it.

29 of the 50 states and DC do allow it in some form. See every state's rule.

Vermont had one of the highest first-time NCLEX-RN pass rates in the country in 2025: 92.6% of the 390 U.S.-educated candidates who tested for a Vermont license passed, 5.9 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 4 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 98 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 both pays RNs the most (a median of $109,440) and has the most new-grad programs on our list (60).