Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($47,960) to the 90th ($80,510). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

With 632,430 jobs nationally, Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses make up 0.41% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 79,610 of those jobs, the top three states hold 28.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in Louisiana (location quotient 2.38, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $80,510, which is 1.7 times the $47,960 at the 10th, a difference of $32,550 annually. Because the mean wage ($64,150) sits above the median ($62,340), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Washington posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $79,700, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses stands number 58 by employment and number 372 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, the group median wage is $98,340 across 71 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 37% less than its group median, and it supplies 6.6% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 22 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $62,340, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 32,320 jobs, 5.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 393 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $30,260 a year, against $91,650 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $62,340 works out to $5,195 a month before taxes, $2,398 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,199 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($55,220) to the 75th ($73,160) is worth $17,940 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $68,574 would sit between the median ($62,340) and the 75th percentile ($73,160), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $55,220, is $7,120 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Opticians, Dispensing, Dietitians and Nutritionists, Ophthalmic Medical Technicians, General Internal Medicine Physicians, Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians, Nurse Anesthetists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.