DNP Salaries, From Federal Wage Data

• DNP Salary

  What the occupations DNP graduates enter are paid, side by side, and what the degree costs against what each of those jobs pays.

  $132,300–$236,590 Median range across the occupations DNP graduates enter

• Nurse Practitioner Salary

  The largest occupation on this list by a wide margin, with the full percentile spread, every state the federal survey publishes, and why no federal figure can tell you what a doctorate adds to it.

  $132,300 Median, Nurse practitioners

• CRNA Salary

  The highest-paid nursing occupation the federal survey publishes, by state and by percentile, and why the gap over a nurse practitioner measures the job rather than the doctorate.

  $236,590 Median, Nurse anesthetists

• Nurse Midwife Salary

  Midwifery pays almost exactly what nurse practice pays, which makes the wage the least interesting part of the decision. What degree accredited programs award, and who accredits them.

  $134,040 Median, Nurse Midwives

• Nurse Educator Salary

  The one page here where the wage data argues against the doctorate: nursing faculty earn less at the median than staff nurses do, while schools are short thousands of them.

  $80,250 Median, nursing instructors

• Chief Nursing Officer Salary

  No federal series measures CNO pay. What exists is the occupation CNOs are counted inside, why its median is not their wage, and how to read the confident figures published elsewhere.

  $166,100 Upper quartile, 11-9111

• Clinical Nurse Specialist Salary

  The federal wage survey has no clinical nurse specialist row. It has a registered nurse row, and clinical nurse specialists are counted inside it, so this page is careful about what the figure describes.

  $100,220 Median, registered nurses employed in hospitals

• Public Health Nurse Salary

  This is the one page on this site where the honest finding is that the work pays less than the alternative, and it is not close.

  $85,730 Median, registered nurses employed in local government

• Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Salary

  Hospitals pay nurse practitioners above the national median, and that gap is the closest published measure of what acute care work is worth. It is not an acute care figure, and this page is careful about the difference.

  $136,690 Median, nurse practitioners employed in hospitals

• Nursing Informatics Salary

  This is the least precise figure on the site and the page says so up front. Informatics nurses are split across two occupations in the federal data and neither one is about them.

  $123,860 Median, medical and health services managers employed in all industries

• Nurse Manager Salary

  The figure here comes from a management occupation rather than a nursing one, and most of the people in it are not nurses. That needs saying before the number rather than after it.

  $133,580 Median, medical and health services managers employed in hospitals

Every figure on this page comes from the BLS OEWS, May 2025 release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, and refreshes with spring 2027 (May 2026 reference period). Every figure with its source, and how this site chooses them.