New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Washington, DC

A quarter of Washington, DC RNs earn less than $41.28 an hour ($85,850 a year) and half earn more than $49.30. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Washington, DC 11th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

Pay is spread out in Washington, DC: $8.02 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median, a wider gap than in most states.

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

The District of Columbia Board of Nursing licenses RNs in Washington, DC.

Washington, DC is not in the Nurse Licensure Compact, so you need a Washington, DC license to work here whatever license you hold elsewhere. If you studied in another state, you can apply to the District of Columbia Board of Nursing for licensure by examination and take the NCLEX for Washington, DC directly, or pass in your school's state and apply here by endorsement afterward.

Maryland and Virginia, next door, are compact states, which matters if you might live on one side of the line and work on the other.

DC offers a Letter of Supervised Practice that lets RN applicants work for 90 days under an RN while an application is pending, but its instructions ask for a copy of a current license, so it may not cover new graduates. Ask the DC Board of Nursing.

What we read: DC Department of Health, Nursing Application Instructions, October 2026.

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

236 of the 275 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Washington, DC in 2025 passed: 85.8%, 0.9 points below the national rate of 86.7%.

With 3 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 92 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.

Washington, DC pays RNs more than any of its neighbors. Virginia has the most new-grad programs on our list (30).