New Hampshire has about 1.4 million residents. Registered nurses average $97,900 a year, 18th among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The New Hampshire Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses through the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification. Its office is at 7 Eagle Square in Concord, telephone (603) 271-2152. Rules and applications are at oplc.nh.gov.
New Hampshire implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact in 2006. A nurse living here holds one multistate license good in every other compact state, Maine and Vermont included. Massachusetts, where many southern New Hampshire residents work, has enacted the compact without implementing it, so a separate Massachusetts license is still needed there.
Nurse practitioner practice
New Hampshire has allowed independent nurse practitioner practice for longer than most of the country and is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's authority. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The University of New Hampshire in Durham runs the state's public baccalaureate program. Saint Anselm College in Manchester has one of the older private nursing programs in New England, Rivier University and Colby-Sawyer College carry further programs, the latter in partnership with Dartmouth Health, and the community college system supplies associate degree graduates.
Pay and workforce
Most hospital nursing work sits in the southern tier around Manchester, Nashua and the Seacoast. Dartmouth Health, which includes Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, is the largest system in the state and its only academic medical center.
Northern New Hampshire is rural and forested, served by small community hospitals and critical access hospitals, and the White Mountains send a steady stream of hiking and skiing injuries their way. Boston, an hour or two south and paying considerably more, pulls at staff all year, and the licensing barrier does nothing to stop it since a nurse can simply obtain the Massachusetts license. See rural and frontier nursing.
Travel and flexible work
New Hampshire buys in more temporary nursing than almost any other state. Contract staff were 13.4 percent of nursing home nurse hours here in mid-2025, close to double the national figure and second only to Vermont and Pennsylvania. On this site's own listings, across the full archive from 2009 to 2026, the state ranks sixth of fifty-one for travel assignments advertised per employed registered nurse. See where the assignments are.
The supply side runs the other way, which is part of the problem. Of the New Hampshire registered nurses with a profile here, 34 percent say they will consider travel work against 39 percent nationally, among the lowest in the country; 43 percent will take per diem shifts. Nurses in this corner of New England stay close to home, and Boston is close to home. See travel nursing and per diem nursing.
Related
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- Licensure by endorsement
- Where the assignments are
- Critical access hospitals
- 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.
- New Hampshire 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.
- Nursing home staffing data. Long Term Care Community Coalition, for contract staffing by state. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- NurseRecruiter job listings, 2009 to September 2026, and nurse profiles. Method and limits are set out in where the assignments are.