Every facility leader in South Florida has had the same conversation this year. A nursing seat has been open longer than anyone is comfortable with, someone says the pay is not competitive, someone else says it is right in line with what the salary sites report, and nobody in the room can say with confidence which is true.

Part of the problem is the data. National averages fold Miami-Dade and Broward in with markets where housing costs half as much. Aggregator sites blend hospital and long-term care figures that behave nothing alike. And the number that actually matters, what a specific nurse turned down last month to stay where they are, does not appear in any published table.

What follows is what we see in offers and declines across the corridor in 2026. Treat the ranges as a starting position for a conversation with your CFO, not as a quote.

The 2026 ranges

CNA: $17 to $22 an hour, roughly $35,000 to $46,000 at full time. The bottom of that band is increasingly hard to staff. Facilities still posting at $16 are competing with retail and hospitality for the same people, and losing.

LPN: $27 to $34 an hour, mid-$50,000s to high-$60,000s annually. Long-term care and assisted living cluster in the lower half, correctional and specialty settings toward the top. LPNs with IV certification and wound care experience price above the band.

Staff RN: $36 to $46 an hour, roughly $75,000 to $96,000 at full time. Skilled nursing and long-term care sit in the lower half, hospital med-surg through the middle, and specialty units run from the mid-$40s into the low $50s an hour. This is the widest band on the list and the one where facilities most often misread their own position.

Charge nurse and unit manager: $85,000 to $105,000, depending on unit size and whether the role carries scheduling and disciplinary responsibility or only clinical oversight.

MDS coordinator: $80,000 to $100,000 in skilled nursing. A small pool, a direct line to reimbursement accuracy, and a role that facilities routinely underpay right up until the vacancy costs them a survey cycle.

ADON: $90,000 to $110,000, with the top of the range in larger buildings and in facilities where the ADON genuinely runs the floor rather than assisting with paperwork.

Director of Nursing: $115,000 to $150,000, with skilled nursing and long-term care generally landing between $115,000 and $140,000 and hospital or multi-site leadership above it. Bonus structures tied to census, survey outcomes, and retention commonly add 5 to 15 percent. We broke this seat down in detail in how much a Director of Nursing makes in Miami.

Two things about these numbers. They are base rates, before differentials, and in a market where nights and weekends are the hardest coverage to hold, differentials are not a rounding error. And they are 2026 figures in a corridor where the last three years have moved faster than most budget cycles, which is why a range you validated in 2024 is probably wrong now.

What moves an offer inside the band

Two facilities four miles apart will make very different offers to the same nurse, and the difference is rarely arbitrary.

  • Setting and acuity. The single largest factor. An ICU RN and a long-term care RN are both RNs and are not competing for the same jobs or the same money.
  • Shift. Nights, weekends, and rotating schedules carry differentials because they have to. A facility that pays a flat rate across all shifts is quietly deciding that its night coverage will come from agency.
  • Certifications. IV therapy, wound care, and specialty certifications on the LPN side; CCRN, CEN, and similar on the RN side. These are the cleanest justification for going above your posted band for one candidate.
  • Bilingual capability. In much of Miami-Dade, Spanish is a clinical requirement rather than a preference, and it prices accordingly. We covered why in bilingual healthcare hiring in Hialeah and Miami Lakes.
  • Reputation. Nurses in this market talk to each other. A building known for stable leadership and workable ratios fills seats at the middle of the band. A building with a reputation for mandatory overtime pays at the top and still struggles.

When you cannot pay at the top

Most facilities cannot, and most do not need to. What they need is to be honest about where they sit and to compete on the variables they actually control.

If you are at the middle of the band, the things that close candidates are schedule predictability, a ratio you can defend in an interview without flinching, a real orientation, and a manager the nurse will want to work for. None of those are free, but all of them are cheaper than a permanent premium on every hour.

If you are below the band, fix that before you spend anything on recruiting. A posting at a rate the market left behind does not produce a slow search, it produces the wrong applicants, which is a different and more expensive problem. That failure mode is laid out in why your healthcare job post gets no qualified applicants.

And be careful with the shortcut. A sign-on bonus is the usual response to a rate problem, and it reliably buys a hire who leaves once it vests. The math is in do sign-on bonuses actually work in Florida healthcare hiring. The same money moved into base or into a shift differential does more work and keeps doing it in month thirteen.

The number you are actually comparing against

When a facility tells us it cannot afford the top of the RN band, the comparison it is making is against its current payroll. That is the wrong baseline in almost every building we look at.

The real baseline includes the contract coverage filling the seat right now, which in this market typically bills at 1.6 to 2.4 times the fully loaded cost of the same clinician on your payroll. It includes the overtime your core staff is absorbing. It includes the turnover that overtime generates, and the cost of that turnover is larger than most leadership teams estimate, as we showed in what nurse turnover really costs Florida facilities.

Priced against an empty seat rather than against a filled one, a $4 an hour increase on a permanent line usually looks small. That is the same arithmetic behind the conversion plan in cutting agency staffing spend.

Pay is what gets you to the table

The last point is the one that costs facilities the most searches. A competitive rate does not win a nurse. It gets you considered.

The nurses worth hiring in Miami-Dade and Broward are employed, and most of them are not reading postings. Reaching them takes outbound recruiting. Keeping them through the process takes speed, because a strong candidate in this corridor holds multiple conversations at once and the slowest one loses. And the offer itself is where a well-run search still comes apart, for reasons we catalogued in why healthcare candidates decline your offer.

Then there is the part that starts the day they say yes. Pay gets someone in the building. What keeps them is everything in how to keep your best nurses from being recruited away, because whatever you paid to hire them, someone will call them next quarter with a number.

How we work on this

We price roles for facility leaders across South Florida every week, and the useful version of that conversation is specific: your setting, your shift, your submarket, and what candidates have actually accepted and declined nearby in the last ninety days. That is permanent placement work across Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Hialeah, and the rest of Miami-Dade and Broward, and it extends into the behavioral health programs where clinical pay bands have moved fastest of all.

If you have a nursing seat that has been open longer than it should be, send us the role, the shift, and the rate you are posting and we will tell you where it sits against the market and what is most likely keeping it open. We respond within one business day, and you do not have to be a client to get a straight answer. It is the same standard we bring to all of our healthcare talent acquisition work.

Frequently asked questions

What does a staff RN earn in Miami-Dade and Broward in 2026?

Most staff RNs in South Florida earn between $36 and $46 an hour in 2026, roughly $75,000 to $96,000 annually at full time. Long-term care and skilled nursing sit toward the lower half of that band, hospital med-surg toward the middle, and specialty units such as ICU, ED, and OR run from the mid-$40s an hour into the low $50s. Nights, weekends, and charge responsibility add differentials on top of base.

How much do LPNs and CNAs make in South Florida?

Staff LPNs typically earn $27 to $34 an hour in 2026, which lands most full-time LPNs in the mid-$50,000s to high-$60,000s. CNAs generally run $17 to $22 an hour, or roughly $35,000 to $46,000 at full time, with the top of that range concentrated in facilities that pay shift differentials and have kept pace with the last two years of increases.

Is there a real pay difference between Miami-Dade and Broward?

Not much. The two counties usually sit within about five percent of each other for the same role and setting, and candidates treat the corridor as one market and commute across it. What moves an offer far more than the county line is the setting, the shift, the acuity, and how the facility is regarded by nurses who have worked there.

Do we have to pay at the top of the range to fill a nursing vacancy?

No, but you do have to be honest about where you sit. Paying at the middle of the market is workable if the schedule is predictable, the ratios are reasonable, and the leadership is stable. Paying below market while asking for mandatory overtime and a rotating schedule is what keeps a seat open for six months. Rate is one of four or five variables, and the other ones are usually cheaper to fix.