New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in West Virginia

A quarter of West Virginia RNs earn less than $32.77 an hour ($68,160 a year) and half earn more than $38.52. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts West Virginia 45th of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

$5.75 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median here, close to the typical gap across the states.

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

The West Virginia Board of Registered Nurses licenses RNs in West Virginia.

West Virginia is in the Nurse Licensure Compact. If West 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 West Virginia 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. Once you apply for an RN license by exam, finish the background check and the board reviews your transcripts, West Virginia issues a Graduate Temporary License on its own, with no separate request. It is valid for 180 days from your graduation date.

Source: West Virginia Board of Registered Nurses, Licensure Requirements, 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.

1,429 of the 1,657 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for West Virginia in 2025 passed: 86.2%, 0.5 points below the national rate of 86.7%.

Against the 7 new-grad programs we track here, that is about 237 new test takers per program, well above the national figure of about 114. Part of that is how few programs we track here, so 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, Maryland pays RNs the most, a median of $99,790. Ohio has the most new-grad programs on our list (67).