Why this number is different from every other travel nurse calculator
Every pay calculator in travel nursing answers the same question: what does this contract pay per hour or per week. That is a useful question. It is also a question about thirteen weeks, and you live in years.
A weekly package of $2,300 is quoted as if it repeats fifty-two times. It does not. Between the end of one assignment and the start of the next there is a gap, and the gap is unpaid. Before your first assignment in a new state there is a licensing wait, and that is unpaid. Credentialing at a new facility runs on its own clock, and that is unpaid. If a contract is cancelled at week four of thirteen, the nine weeks you had budgeted for simply do not exist.
Utilization is the term for this in every other contract profession. It is the ratio of time worked to time available. In travel nursing nobody publishes it, so the comparison most nurses make between a travel package and a staff salary is between a gross weekly number and a net annual one. Those are not the same units.
What the inputs mean
- Weekly package. The full quoted number, taxable base plus housing and meal stipends. This tool does not model taxes. It models weeks.
- Gap after each contract. Be honest here. Two weeks is optimistic if you are waiting on an offer rather than taking planned time off. Nurses who plan zero gap almost never get zero gap.
- Licensing and credentialing wait. Compact states can be fast. Non-compact states routinely run six weeks or longer, and facility credentialing sits on top of that.
- Cancellations. The industry does not publish a rate for this. One per year across four contracts is a reasonable planning assumption, not a prediction. Set it to zero to see the ceiling, then set it to one to see a normal year.
The arithmetic
The tool schedules your contracts across an actual fifty-two week calendar rather than multiplying. It places the licensing wait first, then each contract, then the gap after it. When a cancellation applies, the remaining weeks of that contract become unpaid and the calendar keeps moving. Anything that does not fit inside fifty-two weeks gets cut, which is often the finding by itself: a plan for five thirteen-week contracts with three-week gaps does not fit in a year, and if you have been assuming it does, your income projection was wrong before any cancellation happened.
Realized annual income is the weekly package multiplied by weeks actually paid. Realized weekly is that annual figure divided by fifty-two, which is the number that compares honestly against a staff salary.
What this does not include
Taxes are not modeled. Neither is the stipend question, which matters enormously and depends on whether you maintain a legitimate tax home. Neither are benefits, which staff jobs provide and most travel contracts do not. Neither is overtime, which moves the number in your favor.
Most of those change the comparison in the same direction: against travel. Health premiums you pay yourself, no employer retirement match, no paid holidays, no paid time off. If you want the comparison to be fair, run this number first and then subtract what you are replacing out of pocket.
Three things that move this number more than the rate does
Extensions. An extension has no gap, no new licensing wait, and no new credentialing period. Two extensions on one assignment can be worth more across a year than a package paying two hundred dollars a week more somewhere new. This is the largest lever most travelers have and it is almost never priced.
Licensing ahead of need. The wait is only unpaid if it happens between assignments. Starting a license application during a contract, not after it, converts unpaid weeks into paid ones.
Cancellation terms. Look at what the contract says about facility cancellation notice, whether guaranteed hours survive a low-census week, and whether the agency shares any part of the penalty it bills the facility when a contract is cut early. Agencies frequently bill one to two weeks in that situation. Some will pass a portion along if asked, and almost nobody asks.
Who built this
LocumsLab is built by a practicing CRNA who reviews locums anesthesia contracts. Travel nursing and locums anesthesia are different jobs with different pay structures, but the contract economics are the same problem: a per-unit rate quoted in isolation from the year it has to hold up across. This tool does the year.