New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Virginia

A quarter of Virginia RNs earn less than $38.51 an hour ($80,090 a year) and half earn more than $45.00. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Virginia 26th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

$6.49 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median here, close to the typical gap across the states.

The largest RN job market touching Virginia is the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area, with 46,830 RNs; that count includes nurses in Washington, DC, Maryland and West Virginia.

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Virginia, the places they name most often are Northern Virginia and Virginia Beach.

The Virginia Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Virginia.

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

Of its neighboring states, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia are in the compact; Washington, DC is not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. Once you have applied for a Virginia license and received the board's authorization letter, you may practice as an "R.N. Applicant" until your first exam results are published, for no more than 90 days after you completed your program. If you fail, you stop until you are licensed.

Source: Virginia Administrative Code, 18VAC90-19-110, 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.

4,413 of the 4,987 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Virginia in 2025 passed: 88.5%, 1.8 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

Against the 30 new-grad programs we track here, that is about 166 new test takers per program, well above the national figure of about 114. Expect more competition for each residency spot, and look at new-grad RN jobs outside residencies as well.

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, Washington, DC pays RNs the most, a median of $102,540. North Carolina has the most new-grad programs on our list (52).