How Recruiters Get Paid, and What It Means for the Nurse on the Other End of the Call

Short answer: not by you. Every recruiter who contacts a nurse, therapist or nursing assistant about a job is paid by the organization that wants to fill it, either directly, as a salaried employee of the hospital or health system, or indirectly, through an agency the employer pays a fee or an hourly rate. How that money reaches the recruiter decides what they are rewarded for, and that shapes the conversation you are about to have: how fast they push, which jobs they show you, what they can and cannot negotiate, and why a travel nurse recruiter cares so much about the length of your contract. This guide walks through the three models, gives the federal pay figures for the people doing the job, and ends with what to ask before you let anyone represent you.

Who pays the recruiter: three models

None of the three charges the candidate. The employer pays in every case, and in the two agency models the employer pays more than it would for its own recruiter, which is why hospitals keep in-house teams and use agencies for the jobs those teams cannot fill. The federal survey of the occupation bears that out: 13% of human resources specialists work in the employment services industry (staffing and recruiting agencies) and 11% in healthcare and social assistance, and the handbook notes that "some organizations contract recruitment and placement work to outside firms."

What recruiters earn: the May 2025 figures

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts recruiters inside the occupation "human resources specialists", the people who "recruit, screen, and interview job applicants and place newly hired workers in jobs". Its newest figures are for May 2025.

The industry a recruiter works in moves that median by more than $23,000. The two industries that matter to a nurse are near the bottom of the list:

Two things about the survey change how to read those rows. First, its wages are straight-time gross pay that already includes "incentive pay, including commissions and production bonuses", so an agency recruiter's commission is inside the $60,550, not on top of it. Second, the survey excludes the self-employed, so an independent recruiter who runs their own desk has no federal benchmark at all. The staffing row is the lowest because agency pay is a lower typical wage with a wider spread: the recruiters at the top of the range are the ones who place the most people, or the highest-paid ones.

For comparison, the same handbook's May 2025 median for registered nurses is $97,550, or $46.90 an hour. The recruiter calling you about a staff job most likely earns less than you will, and the one calling about a travel contract earns a median lower still.

How a hospital's in-house recruiter is paid

An in-house recruiter is a salaried employee of the health system, paid every period whether or not anyone is hired that month. Some employers add a bonus tied to hiring goals or the organization's annual plan, but there is no fee attached to your salary and nothing about your offer changes what the recruiter takes home. The handbook describes the work as recruiting, screening and interviewing applicants and placing new hires, mostly full time during regular business hours.

What that means for you: an in-house recruiter has no financial reason to inflate or deflate your offer. Their constraint is capacity, not commission. They carry many open requisitions at once, the pay bands are set by the organization's compensation team rather than by them, and the thing they are measured on is filling the job with someone who stays. A recruiter in this model can tell you honestly where a job sits in the band and what the unit is like, because none of it changes their pay; what they usually cannot do is move the band.

How an agency recruiter is paid on a permanent placement

When an agency fills a permanent job, the employer pays the agency a fee once you start, and the fee is set as a share of your first-year pay. The agency's recruiter is paid a salary, often a modest one, plus a commission on the fees they bring in; the Department of Labor's description of commissions is the general one, "a commission may be paid in addition to a salary or instead of a salary", and federal law does not require commission to be paid at all, so the split is the agency's choice and is never published. The fee is the employer's cost. It is not deducted from your wages, and a recruiter who asks you to pay for a placement is not working in this model.

What that means for you: because the fee scales with your salary, an agency recruiter has a direct interest in your offer being higher, which is the one point where their incentive and yours line up. The rest of it is worth knowing too. The commission is earned when you start, and if the agency's agreement with the employer has a guarantee period, the fee and the commission depend on you staying through it, so the recruiter wants a quick start and a candidate who stays through the first months. The recruiter's client is the employer, not you, and they can only show you the jobs their agency has a contract to fill. Ask which employers those are before you agree to be submitted anywhere, so you know where your name has gone and can still apply directly where you choose.

How travel nurse recruiters get paid

Travel and contract staffing works differently from a placement fee, and it is the model most nurses are actually asking about. The facility does not pay a one-time fee; it pays the agency an hourly rate, the bill rate, for every hour you work on assignment. AMN Healthcare, one of the largest travel nurse agencies, describes bill rates in its annual report as "the hourly straight-time rates that we bill to clients" and its revenue as "fees earned from the temporary staffing and permanent placement of healthcare professionals". Out of that bill rate the agency pays your whole package: the taxable hourly wage, the housing and meal stipends, travel reimbursement, benefits and insurance. In 2025 the company's cost of revenue, which it says "consists predominantly of compensation, benefits, housing, travel and allowance costs for healthcare professionals", was 71.7% of its revenue. The rest, a little under three dollars in ten, paid for the agency itself: its recruiters, account managers, credentialing staff, offices and profit.

Your recruiter's own pay comes out of that remaining share. Agencies do not publish how they divide it among recruiters, and the federal survey only says that the staffing industry's recruiters earn a median of $60,550 with commission included. What the structure makes clear is what a travel recruiter is rewarded for: nurses on assignment, and hours billed for them. A recruiter in this model earns something for every week you work, not a one-time fee, so their income rises with each contract you take, each extension you accept and each assignment you finish rather than cancel. That is why travel recruiters stay in touch between contracts, why extensions are offered early and often, and why a cancelled contract matters so much to them.

What that means for your package:

• The bill rate is fixed by the facility's contract; the package is not. Two agencies filling the same job are usually billing the same facility rate and building different packages out of it, with different splits between taxable wage, stipends and the agency's share. Comparing offers for the same assignment is comparing those splits.
• Stipends are not free money from the agency. They are part of the same bill rate, paid tax-free only when you meet the IRS tests. How that works, including why a very low taxable wage next to very high stipends costs you on overtime, sick pay and retirement matching, is in our guide to how travel nurse stipends work.
• "There is no more room" means the agency's share, not the bill rate. A recruiter can usually move money between the lines of your package more easily than they can increase the total; ask for the four lines separately (taxable wage, housing stipend, meals stipend, travel reimbursement) and compare totals, not blended hourly numbers.
• Extensions are where the leverage is. An extension costs the agency nothing to recruit, and the recruiter is paid for every week of it, so an extension request is the right moment to ask for a better split.
• The recruiter's interest and yours mostly align, until they don't. Both of you want you working. They also want you working through their agency, on the assignments they have, and finishing every contract, which is not always the same as the assignment that is best for you.

What to ask any recruiter before you say yes

1. Who do you work for, and who pays you for this placement? The answer tells you which of the three models you are in and whose interests the recruiter represents.
2. Is this employer your client, and have you submitted me anywhere? Never let an agency present you to a hospital without your agreement; you should always know where your name has gone.
3. What is the pay band, or the bill rate? An in-house recruiter can usually tell you the band. A travel recruiter rarely shares the bill rate, but the package's four lines are yours to see.
4. What happens to your pay, and mine, if I leave early? Ask whether there is a guarantee period or a cancellation clause and what it does to the recruiter's commission; then read yours.
5. Is there any cost to me? There should not be. In every model described here the employer pays. A fee charged to the candidate is a reason to walk away.

Looking without a recruiter

You do not need a recruiter to find a staff job, and most hospitals post their own openings, short-term and contract positions included. Our job board lists the employer and the location for every posting, so you can see who is hiring before anyone represents you: registered nurse jobs, LPN jobs and CNA jobs, with state pages such as California, Texas and Florida. Employers that recruit through Betterleap contact candidates directly, from their own recruiters' mailboxes, which puts you in the first model above: a salaried recruiter for the organization that wants to hire you, and nothing owed by anyone when you accept. For what the jobs pay, see the highest-paying states for nurses, and for how recruiting looks from the employer's side, how recruiters make money.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Human Resources Specialists, May 2025 wages, industry table and largest employers, read 22 October 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Registered Nurses, May 2025 wages, read 22 October 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 technical notes (what the survey's wages include and who is excluded), read 22 October 2026.
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wages: Commissions, read 22 October 2026.
• AMN Healthcare Services, Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025, filed 20 February 2026, read 22 October 2026.