$150 an Hour as a Staff Nurse in California

Staff nurses at Kaiser in Northern California can make over $150 an hour in 2025. No travel job, no NP degree. If you’re still getting paid $40 to $60 an hour, you’re underpaid.

These rates are from May 2025, when this was first written. Pay changes every year, so check current rates in Map My Pay.

The problem is your pay, not you

Rent and groceries keep going up, and student loan payments are back. Somehow your paycheck hasn’t moved.

You pick up extra shifts. You float to unsafe units and get canceled on your day off. You still end every month wondering where the hell your money went.

You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just underpaid.

What Kaiser NorCal nurses make in 2025

These numbers come from this year’s union contract in Northern California:

• $89.54 an hour after 2 years.
• $126.85 an hour as a night-shift per diem nurse.
• $161.04 an hour with seniority and differentials.
• That’s over $1,200 per 8-hour shift.

There’s no travel job and no NP degree here. It’s a smart move plus a union contract that protects nurses. For the full pay scale, see our free Kaiser pay spreadsheet.

Why high pay changes everything

People love to tell nurses it’s not about the money. With prices going up, it is.

There’s a reason Kaiser doesn’t have to worry about filling jobs. A 2014 study by McHugh and Ma looked at this. It found that nurses in hospitals with better work settings, the right staffing and good pay were much less likely to burn out or be unhappy with their jobs.

Here’s what that means for you:

• More experienced coworkers, not a revolving door of new hires.
• Managers who don’t beg you to stay late every week.
• Safer ratios, better teamwork and more stable units.
• Nurses who want to stay because the job pays what it should.

When nurses are paid well, they stay. When they stay, you don’t get stuck covering their shifts. You don’t get floated without training. You don’t feel like your license is on the line every day.

That’s why Kaiser NorCal has nurses making over $150 an hour and staying for 10, 20, even 30 years. I wrote more about this in nurses aren’t burnt out, they’re underpaid.

Our story: from debt to $300K+ as nurses

Monica and I lived in NYC and could barely afford rent with two full-time nursing jobs. We moved to Sacramento with $128K in debt, a $1,270 car note and five-figure credit card balances.

We figured it out. We both work less than 20 hours a week now, and we’ve paid off everything. We make over $300K a year just from nursing jobs. You can read how in how we paid off $128K of debt.

Now we teach other nurses how to do the same. You don’t have to stay stuck. You just need the right plan.

Written by Jason, RN. I went from $37 an hour in New York to $143 an hour in California and paid off $128K of debt in under a year. I share our numbers in the Nurses to Riches newsletter and on YouTube.