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Nurse Practitioner: what the job is, what it pays, and how to get hired.

The work, the skills that matter, the tools in demand and the pay range, from U.S. government data, plus every TryHired page for the role.

Maid DizdarevicCareer coach · 8x LinkedIn Top Voice
Updated Oct 24, 2026 · Data: BLS OEWS May 2025 · O*NET 31.0
Pay ladder · select a percentile
Median percentile pay

Half of nurse practitioners earn more than this and half earn less.

Annual
$132,300
Hourly
$63.61
Source
BLS May 2025
Quick answer

Nurse Practitioners diagnose and treat acute, episodic, or chronic illness, independently or as part of a healthcare team. The median pay is $132,300 a year ($63.61 an hour) (BLS, May 2025). The most commonly reported education requirement is a master's degree (65% of workers surveyed by O*NET).

Median pay
$132,300
BLS May 2025
Employed in the U.S.
323,040
BLS May 2025
Preparation
Job Zone 5 of 5
extensive preparation
Most common education
Master's Degree
65% of workers
Explore the role

Every page for Nurse Practitioners

SalaryNurse Practitioner salary

Pay by percentile, state and metro, with a negotiation script.

Open →How to becomeNurse Practitioner how to become

Education, training and the skills to build first.

Open →ResumeNurse Practitioner resume

Keywords, bullet formulas and the skills to prove.

Open →Interview questionsNurse Practitioner interview questions

Questions with what they test, plus practice mode.

Open →Career changeNurse Practitioner career change

Where these skills transfer, with skill match and pay change.

Open →Free toolCheck your resume

Parsed text, evidence per bullet, fixes first.

Open →
The work

What nurse practitioners do day to day

Data Core tasks rated most important by workers in the role (O*NET).

  1. Maintain complete and detailed records of patients' health care plans and prognoses.
  2. Develop treatment plans, based on scientific rationale, standards of care, and professional practice guidelines.
  3. Provide patients with information needed to promote health, reduce risk factors, or prevent disease or disability.
  4. Analyze and interpret patients' histories, symptoms, physical findings, or diagnostic information to develop appropriate diagnoses.
  5. Diagnose or treat complex, unstable, comorbid, episodic, or emergency conditions in collaboration with other health care providers as necessary.
  6. Prescribe medication dosages, routes, and frequencies, based on such patient characteristics as age and gender.
  7. Diagnose or treat chronic health care problems, such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
  8. Prescribe medications based on efficacy, safety, and cost as legally authorized.
Skills that matter

Ranked by importance to the job

Data O*NET importance ratings. The first three are core.

Complex Problem SolvingcoreReading ComprehensioncoreActive ListeningcoreCritical ThinkingSocial PerceptivenessJudgment and Decision MakingWritingSpeakingActive Learning

Knowledge areas: Medicine and Dentistry, English Language, Biology, Psychology, Customer and Personal Service, Therapy and Counseling.

Tools and technology

Software nurse practitioners use

Data Examples reported for the role; employer demand flags from O*NET.

  • Epic SystemsMedical softwareHot technology
  • MEDITECH softwareMedical softwareHot technology
  • eClinicalWorks EHR softwareMedical softwareHot technology
  • Allscripts Professional EHRMedical software
  • Amkai AmkaiChartsMedical software
  • Bizmatics PrognoCIS EMRMedical software
  • Cerner MillenniumMedical software
  • GE Healthcare Centricity EMRMedical software
  • Healthcare common procedure coding system HCPCSMedical software
  • Medical condition coding softwareMedical software
  • Medical procedure coding softwareMedical software
  • Medscribbler EnterpriseMedical software

Also called: ACNP (Acute Care Nurse Practitioner), Adult Nurse Practitioner, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN), ARNP Specialist (Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner Specialist), Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP), Family Practice Certified Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner.

Method

How this page is built

Tasks, skills, tools, education and related roles come from O*NET 31.0. Pay and employment come from the BLS OEWS May 2025 national estimates. The skill-match score is our calculation: Skill match is the correlation between the two occupations' skill profiles: for each of 35 O*NET skills (10 essential, 25 transferable) we multiply importance by level, subtract the average across all occupations, and correlate the two profiles. 100 means identical shape; 0 or below means unrelated. Only occupations that O*NET itself lists as related are compared.

What this page can't tell you
  • How a specific employer defines the job.
  • Pay for self-employed workers (OEWS covers employees).
  • Your own chances: data describes the occupation, not you.
Sources
  1. O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. TryHired selected, ranked and combined the data; O*NET is not responsible for these pages.
  2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 estimates (public domain).