What salary does a neonatal nurse make and how much is a NICU nurse salary? The salary for a neonatal nurse depends on a variety of factors, including:
- Location
- Years of experience
- Education
- Certifications
A neonatal nurse’s salary also geatly depends on overtime worked, holidays worked, and amount of time taken off, due to neonatal nurses having an hourly salary. This fluctuates the salary range.
Average neonatal nursing salaries can range vastly, mostly following in the salary range of:
- $51,000 to $80,000 per year
Hourly rates are highly dependent on location and years of NICU nurse experience. Hourly NICU nurse salary rates range from:
- $23.00 per hour to $35.00 per hour
NICU Nurse Salary and Overtime
Neonatal nurses that work overtime can drastically improve their nurse salary. For instance, let’s take a new neonatal nurse that makes a salary of $23.00 per hour starting out. This NICU nurse decides to work one extra shift a week, and for the sake of this argument, let’s assume the nurse works a 12-hour shift and each hour is considered overtime.
The original salary starts at $23 per hour, with three 12-hour shifts a week. Some quick math leads us to that nurse’s annual salary:
- $23/hour * 12 hours = $276 per day
- $236 per day * 3 days = $828 per week
- $828 per week * 52 weeks in a year = $43,056 NICU Nurse Salary
Now, going back to the overtime for the nurse at one extra shift per week, all of which is overtime pay at a rate of time and a half (150% hourly wage), and you get the following:
- $23/hour * 1.5 = $34.50/hour
- $34.50/hour *12 hours = $414 per day
- $414 per day * 52 weeks in a year = $21,528 Additional NICU Nurse Salary
Combine the two salaries, which obviously will not include taxes and benefits such as insurance and retirement funds, and you get a grand total of $64,584 for a new Neonatal Nurse.
This doesn’t even include differentials, which can include extra money on a NICU nurse’s hourly rate for working weekends, night shifts, and extra shifts in instances where the NICU is critically short on nurses.
Updated: June 2011
