Utah has about 3.5 million residents and, by median age, the youngest population of any state. Registered nurses average $90,950 a year, 31st among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The Utah Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses through the Division of Professional Licensing. Its office is in the Heber M. Wells Building on East 300 South in Salt Lake City, telephone (801) 530-6628. Rules and applications are at dopl.utah.gov/nurse.
Utah was among the first states to implement the Nurse Licensure Compact, in 2000. A nurse living in Utah holds one multistate license good in every other compact state, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona included. Nevada, immediately west, is not a member.
Nurse practitioner practice
Utah is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's authority. Utah asks for a period of mentored practice before prescriptive authority for controlled substances becomes unrestricted. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The University of Utah College of Nursing in Salt Lake City is the state's academic nursing school. Brigham Young University's College of Nursing in Provo, Weber State University in Ogden and Utah Valley University run further baccalaureate programs, with Salt Lake Community College and the technical colleges supplying associate degree and practical nurse graduates.
Pay and workforce
Most Utahns live along the Wasatch Front, from Ogden through Salt Lake City to Provo, and so does most of the nursing work. Intermountain Health is the dominant employer, alongside University of Utah Health, whose hospital serves as the academic referral center not just for Utah but for a large part of the interior West, taking patients flown in from Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada.
St. George in the southwest has grown quickly with retirees. The rest of the state is desert and mountain country served by critical access hospitals, where the national parks bring a steady summer run of trauma and heat cases through rural emergency departments. See rural and frontier nursing.
Travel and flexible work
Utah advertises less travel nursing per nurse than almost anywhere in the country. Across NurseRecruiter's full archive of job listings, 2009 to 2026, it ranks fiftieth of the fifty states and the District of Columbia on that measure, near the bottom alongside Mississippi and Minnesota, and far below neighbouring Idaho and Wyoming.
The likely reasons are local rather than mysterious. Utah's population is the youngest in the country and its nursing workforce is growing, the Wasatch Front concentrates most facilities within an hour of each other, and a large in-state education pipeline feeds them. A hospital that can hire locally does not buy contracts. See where the assignments are.
Utah nurses reflect the same settled market: 36 percent of those with a profile on this site say they will consider travel assignments and 41 percent per diem shifts, both below the national figures of 39 and 46 percent. See travel nursing and per diem nursing.
Related
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Where the assignments are
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- Critical access hospitals
- Rural and frontier nursing
- 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.
- Utah 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. Method and limits are set out in where the assignments are.