Wyoming has about 589,000 residents, fewer than any other state. Registered nurses average $88,600 a year, 35th among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The Wyoming State Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses. Its office is on Hobbs Avenue in Cheyenne, telephone (307) 777-7601. Rules and applications are at wsbn.wyo.gov.
Wyoming was among the first states to implement the Nurse Licensure Compact, in 2000. A nurse living in Wyoming holds one multistate license good in every other compact state, which covers all six of its neighbors: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.
Nurse practitioner practice
Wyoming is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's authority. In a state where several counties hold a few thousand people and no resident physician, nurse practitioners run a good share of the primary care clinics. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing at the University of Wyoming in Laramie is the state's only baccalaureate nursing program. Casper College, Laramie County Community College and the other community colleges supply associate degree and practical nurse graduates, and the state relies on them heavily, because a single university program cannot staff a state this size on its own.
Pay and workforce
Wyoming has no large city. Cheyenne and Casper are the biggest, and their hospitals, Cheyenne Regional Medical Center and Banner Wyoming Medical Center, are the largest in the state. Everywhere else, care comes from small county hospitals, most of them critical access hospitals with a handful of inpatient beds.
Patients needing specialist or trauma care are commonly flown to Denver, Salt Lake City or Billings. Jackson and the gateway towns to Yellowstone and Grand Teton take in millions of visitors a year, loading small emergency departments with trauma cases far beyond what the resident population would suggest, and housing costs in Jackson make staffing its hospital harder than anywhere else in the state.
Recruiting and keeping nurses in the least populous state in the country is the problem that sits behind all of this. See rural and frontier nursing and the nursing shortage.
Travel and flexible work
The gap gets filled with contract nurses. Across NurseRecruiter's full archive of job listings, 2009 to 2026, Wyoming ranks ninth of the fifty states and the District of Columbia for travel assignments advertised per employed registered nurse, on a base of 5,180 registered nurses, the smallest nursing workforce in the country. See where the assignments are.
Wyoming nurses travel more than most: 47 percent of those with a profile here say they will consider travel assignments, against 39 percent nationally. Per diem interest is lower, at 36 percent against 46, which is what distance does to shift work: picking up a single shift somewhere else is not practical when the next hospital is two hours away. Compact membership since 2000 makes all six neighbouring states available on the licence a Wyoming nurse already holds. See travel nursing and per diem nursing.
Related
- Rural and frontier nursing
- Critical access hospitals
- Where the assignments are
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- 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.
- Wyoming State 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.