Credential
Licensed practical nurse licence (LPN/LVN)
The shortest licensed route into nursing: about a year of training and a national exam, for work that pays roughly two-thirds of what a registered nurse earns.
What it costs to get. The middle half of the range — a quarter of people pay less, a quarter pay more.
Months of training, full time. Part time takes longer and is how most people actually do it.
Months of the pay premium needed to cover that cost. Not months until you are ahead overall — the training time above comes first.
Source: US Department of Education, College Scorecard, Field of Study data, 2026 · view
What that cost figure is, and what it is not
Read this figure with one caveat: the federal programme code it comes from, CIP 51.39, covers practical and vocational nursing together with nursing-assistant training, and at certificate level the two cannot be separated. That range is median cumulative FEDERAL LOAN DEBT at completion, not a tuition sticker price and not total cost. It is what completers actually borrowed, so it excludes grants, savings, family money, employer funding and living costs — which makes it a FLOOR on what the credential costs, never a ceiling. The low and high figures are the 25th and 75th percentiles across the institutions that report a figure for this programme, so a quarter of institutions sit below the low end. College Scorecard pools two award years into each figure; the release used here is dated 10 June 2026.
About a year full time at most schools, longer part time. The exam at the end is the NCLEX-PN.
Renewal is every one to two years depending on the state.
How many people hold this, and how many are working in the field
How many earn this each year
53,362 people who passed the NCLEX-PN licensing exam — 2025, calendar year 2025.
We are not turning that into a percentage. This is an annual flow — the people who earned the credential in one year. Employment figures are a standing stock, everyone working in the occupation at one time. Dividing a flow into a stock produces a number that reads like a hiring rate and is not one. Where we hold a standing count of credential holders we publish the share employed; here we do not have one, so we publish the flow and stop.
What that count includes: Everyone who passed the NCLEX-PN during 2025 — first-time and repeat, US-educated and internationally educated. 68,996 sat it and 53,362 passed, a 77.3% pass rate. It is a count of exam passes in one year, not of people holding a practical-nurse licence today.
NCSBN, 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Research Brief vol. 96 (June 2026), Table 12 (People newly credentialed during one year) · view
What it lets you do
The pay belongs to the job, not to the credential. These are the occupations this qualifies you for, with what BLS records people already doing them earn.
| Job | Is it required? | Median | Employed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses | Legally required to hold the job | $64,400 | 648,410 |
Median pay and employment: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
Does it pay for itself?
The job this unlocks pays a median of $64,400. The employment-weighted median across every occupation we publish is $50,020, so the premium for holding this is about $14,380 a year before tax. At that premium the cost above is covered in the number of months shown.
Read that as a comparison to an average job, not to your job. We do not know what you earn now, so we do not use it. The baseline is the employment-weighted median across all the occupations on this site — the midpoint American worker. If you already earn more than that, the payback is longer than shown; if you earn less, shorter. The figure also ignores the months of training, during which most people earn less or nothing, and it ignores interest on anything borrowed.
And it assumes you get the job. Every payback figure on this site is conditional on being hired into the work. That is the assumption the credential-holder count above exists to test, and it is the assumption every other pay site makes silently.
What you need before you start
- A place on a state-approved practical nursing programme
Do not do this if
- you want to be a registered nurse eventually — bridging costs more in total than going straight to an associate degree
- you cannot pass a criminal background check
All credentials, by payback period · How this is calculated · Look up something else