About 737,000 people live in Alaska, fewer than in any state but Wyoming and Vermont. Registered nurses there average $114,870 a year, the sixth highest figure among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The Alaska Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses and licensed practical nurses through the state's Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing. The office is on West 7th Avenue in Anchorage, reachable at (907) 269-8161. Forms and rules are published at commerce.alaska.gov.
Alaska has not joined the Nurse Licensure Compact. A multistate license issued elsewhere is no use here: a nurse has to apply to the Alaska board for a license by endorsement before working in the state, and an Alaska license covers Alaska and nowhere else. What that application involves is set out under licensure by endorsement. A compact bill has been introduced in the legislature without passing.
The exception is federal employment. A nurse working at a federally operated facility, which in Alaska means Indian Health Service sites and military hospitals, may hold a license from any state. See Indian Health Service and tribal nursing.
Nurse practitioner practice
Alaska is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's own authority, with no physician agreement in the way. The practical effect is larger here than in most places. Much of the population lives off the road system, and in a good many villages the nearest clinician is a nurse practitioner or a community health aide rather than a doctor. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The University of Alaska Anchorage School of Nursing runs the state's baccalaureate program and delivers much of it at sites around Alaska rather than requiring students to move to Anchorage, which is the only workable model in a state this size. Associate degree and practical nurse programs run through other University of Alaska campuses, and the state also relies on the community health aide program, a training pathway with no equivalent in the lower 48, to staff village clinics.
Pay and workforce
Pay in Alaska is high and so is the cost of living. Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau hold most of the hospital work. Beyond them, care runs through regional hospitals, critical access hospitals and village clinics, many of them operated by tribal health organizations such as the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, which is the largest such system in the country. See rural and frontier nursing.
Travel and flexible work
The impression that Alaska runs on contract nursing is borne out by the listings. Across NurseRecruiter's full archive, 2009 to 2026, Alaska ranks second of the fifty states and the District of Columbia for travel assignments advertised per employed registered nurse, behind only Idaho. With 7,040 registered nurses in the whole state, a single hospital's vacancies move the market. See where the assignments are.
Alaska nurses are also among the most willing in the country to travel: 48 percent of those with a profile on this site say they will consider travel work, against 39 percent nationally, though only 39 percent will take per diem shifts against 46 percent nationally, which is what a state with few facilities within driving distance of each other looks like.
Every placement here carries a licensing step, because the state is outside the compact, and remote postings often add housing and flight allowances that never show up in a wage survey. See travel nursing and nurse staffing agencies.
Related
- Licensure by endorsement
- Indian Health Service and tribal nursing
- Rural and frontier nursing
- Where the assignments are
- Nurse staffing agencies
- Nursing by state
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates for July 1, 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, registered nurses (29-1141), May 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Alaska Board of Nursing, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- NurseRecruiter job listings, 2009 to September 2026, and nurse profiles, for travel postings per employed nurse and stated willingness. Method and limits are set out in where the assignments are.