Registered Nurses salary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

With 29,560 registered nurses employed in the Pittsburgh metro, this is one of the larger nursing workforces in the country. The 2024 median annual wage was $81,190, which runs about 7% below the Pennsylvania median of $87,610 and roughly 14% below the national median of $94,511. That gap is meaningful, and worth understanding before reading anything else on this page.

The average wage of $86,040 sits above the median by about $4,800. A portion of nurses in the metro earn well above the middle figure, pulling the average up. The spread from the 10th to the 90th percentile runs from $67,000 to $107,870, so a nurse just starting out earns close to $67,000 while one at the top of the range earns about 61% more. That kind of range usually reflects differences in years of experience, specialty, and whether a role is in a hospital, outpatient clinic, or long-term care setting.

Pittsburgh has a dense concentration of large health systems, which historically keeps base wages competitive within the region but still below what nurses earn in higher-cost states like New York or California. The metro-to-state gap here is not unusual for western Pennsylvania compared to the Philadelphia corridor, where wages tend to track closer to the national figure.

The 25th-to-75th percentile band runs from $75,680 to $96,920, a spread of about $21,000. Most working nurses in the Pittsburgh area land somewhere in that range, which gives a cleaner picture of typical pay than the median alone.