New grad RN jobs and nurse residency programs in Wisconsin

A quarter of Wisconsin RNs earn less than $39.39 an hour ($81,920 a year) and half earn more than $45.93. First-year offers tend to sit near the lower figure, since hospital pay scales usually rise with experience.

That puts Wisconsin 23rd of the 50 states and DC for median RN pay.

$6.54 an hour separates the 25th percentile from the median here, close to the typical gap across the states.

The largest RN job market touching Wisconsin is the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington area, with 43,600 RNs; that count includes nurses in Minnesota.

When people search for new grad RN jobs in Wisconsin, the places they name most often are Milwaukee and Madison.

The Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services licenses RNs in Wisconsin.

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

Of its neighboring states, Iowa is in the compact; Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota are not, so working there means a separate license.

Yes, with conditions. Wisconsin's nursing rules include a temporary permit for graduates, with its own sections on the title you use, the supervision you work under and how long it lasts. Ask the board for the current length before you plan around it.

Source: Wisconsin Administrative Code, chapter N 2, subchapter IV, 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.

3,440 of the 3,890 first-time, U.S.-educated candidates who took the NCLEX-RN for Wisconsin in 2025 passed: 88.4%, 1.7 points above the national rate of 86.7%.

With 27 new-grad programs on our list, that is about 144 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, Minnesota pays RNs the most, a median of $101,510. Illinois has the most new-grad programs on our list (84).