Updated on: 22/10/2026
A travel nurse recruiter got mad because a nurse knew her number
A travel nurse posted in r/TravelNursing that her recruiter was frustrated with her. Her crime: she won’t take a contract under $2,100 a week. She laid out her reasoning plainly. Hotels away from home, isolation, staff nurses who resent travelers because they assume you’re rich. Below a certain number, the trade-off isn’t worth it, so she’d rather wait for a fair rate than burn out on a cheap one.
The thread got 159 upvotes and 49 comments in a few days. Not one person sided with the recruiter.
The top reply, with 63 upvotes, was simple: get a new recruiter, someone out there will fight for your price. The second, with 61, asked the question that should haunt every staffing agency: did the recruiter ever ask what pay range would make an assignment worthwhile before presenting jobs? Because a recruiter who knows your floor upfront doesn’t get frustrated. A recruiter who never asked is just filling spots.
Dozens of other nurses chimed in with their own floors, and every one of them was higher than $2,100.
What 49 travel nurses said about agency pay and recruiters
Read the whole thread and a pattern shows up. Nurses aren’t asking for pandemic money. They’re asking for a floor, and every one of them already knows theirs.
One won’t look under $2,200 for days in a state she likes. Another says $2,500 to even open the contract. One has a hard minimum of $2,800. Another won’t move for less than $3,200. One nurse pointed out she cleared $1,765 net on a 43-hour paycheck as a staff nurse, so anything under $2,700 makes travel a pay cut once you double your housing. Several said exactly that: this is why I quit traveling.
The number isn’t the point. The point is that every nurse has one, and the agency model is built to hide it. A nurse gets one recruiter. The recruiter gets a pay range from the agency. The lower the nurse signs, the more margin the agency keeps, and in some shops the more the recruiter makes. One commenter said it directly: that’s why you research rates before you sign anything.
So the advice in the thread is the same advice it’s been for a decade. Work with four or five agencies. Put your minimum in writing. Ghost the ones who badger you. Never rely on one recruiter to find you contracts. Go find the highest rate yourself and call that agency.
That’s a lot of work to do on your day off just to find out what you’re worth. The nurse isn’t the problem. The plumbing is.
Name Your Price: set your travel nurse pay, let hospitals bid
We built SkillGigs around the one thing that thread kept circling back to. On SkillGigs, the nurse sets the number first.
Here’s how it works. You post your skill listing with your specialty, your licenses, where you’ll go, and the weekly pay you want. That’s your floor, and it’s visible. Hospitals and facilities browse talent, not the other way around, and when they want you, they send a bid against your listing at or above your number.
You see every bid on your phone. You can accept it, counter it, or let it expire. A bid is only good for 24 hours, so nobody sits on you. If you counter, the facility has 48 hours to respond. If they come back low, you counter again or walk. Nothing is binding until you accept a formal offer, so bidding costs you nothing but a tap.
The nurse who won’t take $2,100 puts $2,600 on her listing and never has to explain herself to anyone. A facility that can’t pay it doesn’t bid. A facility that can, does. No recruiter is in the middle deciding whether your number is reasonable, and no one’s commission goes up when you take less.
The thread’s second-most-upvoted comment asked whether the recruiter learned her floor before showing her jobs. On SkillGigs that question can’t come up. Your floor is the first thing every hospital sees.
And because you’re on a W-2 contract with us, the parts a good agency handles, payroll, compliance, credentialing, housing stipends, still get handled. You just stop doing the agency’s job of finding out what the market will pay you. The market tells you directly.
Stop negotiating travel nurse pay with a recruiter. Name your price.
A recruiter who gets mad because you know your worth is telling you something about the business model, not about you. Every nurse in that thread already knows her floor. The only thing missing was a place to post it and let the hospitals come to her.
That’s SkillGigs. Set your price, take the bids that meet it, and let the ones that don’t expire on their own.
Create your listing at skillgigs.com and name your price today.
Source: “recruiter mad because I wont take low travel pay”, posted by u/Ok-Jaguar-3137 on r/TravelNursing.
FAQs
What is a good weekly rate for a travel nurse?
A good weekly rate depends on your specialty, location, experience, and living expenses. Set a minimum that makes the assignment worthwhile. On SkillGigs, you can list your desired weekly pay and review bids from hospitals and facilities.
How does Name Your Price work on SkillGigs?
Set your desired weekly pay in your skill listing and let hospitals and facilities bid. You can accept a bid, counter it, or let it expire. Bids last 24 hours, and facilities have 48 hours to respond to counteroffers. Nothing is binding until you accept a formal offer.
