Registered Nurses in North Carolina
Every figure on this page is a published state-level statistic or a stated calculation on one. North Carolina has 108,510 registered nurses on employer payrolls — 9.8 for every 1,000 residents.
What the pay is worth here
North Carolina's price level runs at 94.3 against a national 100. Dividing the mean wage by that index puts North Carolina at $91,458 in national-average dollars — 35th highest of the 51 states and DC on that measure.
The adjusted figure is our arithmetic, not a published wage: mean wage ÷ price index × 100. Price index: Derived from BEA implicit regional price deflators (SAIRPD 2024): state/US x 100; matches published RPPs within ~2pts
The 2038 outlook
HRSA projects North Carolina will have 80.3% of the registered nurses it needs by 2038 — a projected shortfall, on their assumptions. A projection is a model of the future, not a measurement of it.
Source: HRSA Workforce Projections FY2025 full-data workbook, Registered Nurses, Rurality=Total
Staffing law and licence portability
- Staffing ratios: no statewide law
- Nurse Licensure Compact: member
Both of these come from secondary-source compilations, not from statute text we have read ourselves — the weakest provenance on this page, and flagged as such. Ratios: Secondary-source compilation (nursejournal.org, hklaw.com, nursinglicensure.org), retrieved 2026-08-14; NY=ICU/critical care only, MA=ICU only, OR=phased from 2024 · Compact: 41 member states per nurse.org/NCSBN-derived lists, June 2026; MA/MI/MN/NY enacted awaiting implementation
Nursing programmes in North Carolina
We don't have nursing programme or NCLEX data for North Carolina yet. We hold it for seven states only — California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas — because those are the boards of nursing whose published results we have read. Nothing national is substituted here.
What this page has, and what it doesn't
- Has: pay, employment and RNs per capita from the BLS OEWS May 2024 state file; a cost-of-living adjustment we calculate; HRSA's 2038 supply projection; staffing-law and compact status from secondary sources.
- Doesn't have: first-person accounts, survey answers, specialty breakdowns, turnover or satisfaction for North Carolina. Those exist on this site only at national level — the accounts we collect are not reliably tied to a state, and inventing a location for them would be worse than admitting we cannot. Nursing programme results are also absent for North Carolina.