Licensed Practical Nurse Salary in Georgia: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A Licensed Practical Nurse in Georgia earns a median of $62,030 a year, or about $29.82 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most LPNs in the state land between $46,010 at the 10th percentile and $76,690 at the 90th. That median sits a little under the national LPN figure, but Georgia has no payroll-eating combination working against it, and the state employs about 21,060 LPNs.

How Georgia compares to the national LPN salary

The national median for Licensed Practical Nurses is $64,400, per the BLS (2025). Georgia’s median of $62,030 runs $2,370 below that. That’s a gap of less than 4 percent, so a Georgia LPN isn’t far off the typical American in the role. The headline number only tells part of the story, though. What a paycheck buys depends on taxes and the cost of living where you actually work, and Georgia tends to be friendlier on both fronts than the high-cost coastal states that pull the national average up.

Pay also spreads widely inside the state. The bottom 10 percent of Georgia LPNs earn $46,010, while the top 10 percent clear $76,690. That’s a range of more than $30,000 between a brand-new LPN and a seasoned one in a high-paying setting. The 25th percentile sits at $52,900 and the 75th at $70,690, so half of all Georgia LPNs fall inside that $52,900 to $70,690 band. The state mean of $61,640 lands just below the median, which tells you pay is fairly evenly distributed rather than skewed by a handful of very high earners.

If you’re weighing Georgia against another state, the raw median is the wrong place to stop. A higher gross in a state with an income tax and pricier housing can leave you with less spendable cash than a lower gross somewhere cheaper. We get into the exact take-home math below.

One more way to read the national gap: the $2,370 difference between Georgia’s $62,030 and the national $64,400 is roughly what a single shift differential or one specialty certification can add to a Georgia LPN’s pay over a year. In other words, the state’s slightly lower median is the kind of gap an individual nurse can close through setting and credentials, not a structural ceiling. Georgia’s 21,060 LPN jobs also give you room to shop between employers, which matters more for your actual paycheck than the statewide median ever will.

LPN salary in Georgia by experience

Experience is the single biggest lever on LPN pay in Georgia. A first-year LPN working a standard floor shift starts near the bottom of the scale. With a few years, a specialty, and a willingness to work nights or weekends, that same nurse moves up the percentile ladder quickly. The table below maps the BLS percentile points (2025) to the rough career stages they represent.

The jump from entry to median is worth about $16,020 a year. Getting from the median to the 75th percentile adds another $8,660, and the climb from the 75th to the 90th is a smaller $6,000. The pattern is common in nursing: the fastest gains come in the first several years, then the curve flattens as you approach the top of the LPN scale. Past that ceiling, the next big step usually isn’t another LPN raise. It’s a different credential, which we cover in the related roles section.

What actually moves you up the ladder in Georgia is concrete. Long-term care and skilled nursing facilities often pay LPNs more than physician offices because the work is harder to staff. Shift differentials for nights and weekends stack on top of base pay. And IV certification, wound care, or a charge-nurse role can each nudge you toward that $70,690 to $76,690 upper band faster than time alone would.

It helps to translate those percentile figures into hourly terms, because a lot of LPN work is paid by the hour and quoted that way in job postings. The entry-level $46,010 works out to about $22.12 an hour for a full-time schedule. The median $62,030 is $29.82, the experienced $70,690 is $33.99, and the senior $76,690 is $36.87. That spread, $22.12 to $36.87, is the real LPN hourly range in Georgia. When a recruiter quotes you a number, you can place it on that scale instantly and know whether you’re being offered entry, mid, or top-of-band pay before you ever negotiate.

Notice how the gaps between stages shrink as you climb. Entry to early career is a $6,890 jump (from $46,010 to $52,900). Early career to median adds $9,130. Median to experienced is $8,660, and experienced to senior is just $6,000. The biggest single step is into the median band, which is why the first three to five years of an LPN career carry the most financial momentum. After that, raises slow, and the people who keep climbing tend to be the ones adding certifications or moving into supervisory shifts rather than simply logging more years.

LPN salary in Georgia by metro area

Where you work inside Georgia matters. Metro Atlanta pays the most and employs the most LPNs by a wide margin, while the smaller metros trail by a few thousand dollars. Here are the five largest Georgia metro areas for LPN employment, with median pay from the BLS (2025).

Atlanta’s $65,060 median is the highest in the state and tops the national LPN median of $64,400. It also concentrates the work: with 9,710 LPNs, the metro holds close to half of every LPN job in Georgia. If you want the deepest job market and the strongest pay, the Atlanta region is the clear answer. Augusta follows at $63,760, helped by its large medical sector anchored by hospitals and a major teaching presence. Savannah comes in at $62,810, right at the state median.

The gap between the top and bottom of this list is real. An LPN in Atlanta earns $5,730 more than one in Columbus at the median, the difference between $65,060 and $59,330. Before you treat that as a clear win, weigh housing. Atlanta’s rents and home prices run higher than Macon’s or Columbus’s, so part of that extra pay goes straight back out the door. The metros toward the bottom of the table can leave a smaller-city LPN with comparable or better spendable income once rent is paid.

Employment density is the other story this table tells. Atlanta’s 9,710 LPN jobs dwarf every other metro on the list combined. Augusta is next with 1,220, then Savannah at 890, Macon at 740, and Columbus at 690. For a job seeker, that concentration cuts both ways. Atlanta offers the most openings, the most employers to play against each other, and the easiest path to switch jobs without relocating, which is itself a pay lever. The smaller metros offer fewer seats, so a single hospital system or nursing-home operator can set the local rate. If you’re tied to one of those areas, your negotiating power comes from credentials and shift flexibility rather than from threatening to walk to a competitor.

It’s also worth seeing how each metro stacks against the statewide median of $62,030. Atlanta ($65,060), Augusta ($63,760), and Savannah ($62,810) all sit at or above it. Macon ($60,990) and Columbus ($59,330) fall below. So three of Georgia’s five biggest LPN markets pay a premium to the state median, and they happen to be the three with the most jobs after Atlanta. The takeaway is simple: the larger Georgia LPN markets generally pay more, not less, which is the opposite of what you’d see for many lower-skill roles where big-city pay barely keeps up with big-city costs.

Take-home pay after taxes in Georgia

Gross salary isn’t what hits your bank account. Federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), and Georgia’s state income tax all come out first. The table below shows estimated take-home for a single filer at each percentile point, using 2026 tax rules. These are estimates for a single filer with no extra withholding; your real numbers depend on filing status, deductions, and benefits.

At the median, a Georgia LPN grossing $62,030 keeps about $49,183 after tax, which works out to roughly $4,099 a month. The effective tax rate at that level is 20.7 percent. It climbs gradually as pay rises, reaching 23.3 percent for a senior LPN at the 90th percentile, who nets $58,851 a year. Georgia’s state income tax takes $2,697 from that median earner, which is the line item a no-tax state would erase entirely.

Reading down the effective-rate column is instructive. An entry-level LPN at $46,010 pays an effective 19.2 percent and nets $37,174, about $3,098 a month. By the experienced 75th-percentile level of $70,690, the rate is 22.3 percent and the net is $54,953, or $4,579 a month. So a raise from the median to the 75th percentile, $8,660 in gross, only adds about $480 a month in spendable pay, because federal tax, FICA, and Georgia state tax all scale up with you. That’s normal, but it’s a useful reality check before you assume a $70,000 offer feels dramatically different day to day than a $62,000 one. Most of the gap between those two jobs shows up as a few hundred dollars a month, not a few thousand.

FICA is the steadiest piece. It runs $3,520 at entry, $4,745 at the median, $5,408 for experienced LPNs, and $5,867 at the senior level, climbing in lockstep with gross because Social Security and Medicare are flat-rate payroll taxes. Federal income tax is the line that grows fastest, from $3,483 at entry to $8,486 at the 90th percentile. Georgia’s state tax stays modest across the whole range, from $1,833 to $3,487, which is part of why the state lands in the middle of the pack on take-home rather than at either extreme.

That’s where the cross-state comparison gets sharp. Take the same $62,030 LPN median and drop it into Texas, which has no state income tax. There, the take-home rises to about $51,880, against Georgia’s $49,183. That’s a gap of $2,697, the exact size of Georgia’s state tax bite, leaving the Texas version of the same paycheck $2,697 richer each year. So a Georgia LPN considering a move to a no-tax state should treat roughly $2,700 as the annual tax difference at the median, before touching base pay or rent.

The number that actually matters, though, is net pay minus local housing. A bigger net in an expensive metro can lose to a smaller net in a cheaper one once rent is paid. The Texas advantage at the median is $2,697 a year, about $225 a month, which a single rent difference between two cities can wipe out in either direction. Run your own figure through the Georgia paycheck calculator, then subtract what you’d actually pay for housing. To get withholding and deductions right at filing time, software like TurboTax walks you through the state piece so you don’t over-withhold all year.

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How to earn more as an LPN in Georgia

The data points to a few clear ways to move up the percentile ladder rather than waiting on across-the-board raises. Each of these is doable inside Georgia without leaving the state.

• Target Atlanta or Augusta. The Atlanta metro median of $65,060 beats the state median of $62,030 by more than $3,000, and Augusta’s $63,760 isn’t far behind. Relocating from a lower-paying metro toward these markets is one of the fastest pay bumps available.
• Move into long-term care or skilled nursing. These settings staff a high share of Georgia’s LPNs and frequently pay above physician-office rates because the roles are harder to fill. That setting choice alone can push you from the median toward the $70,690 75th percentile.
• Stack a specialty certification. IV therapy, wound care, gerontology, and pharmacology credentials make you more valuable on the floor and support a move into the experienced and senior bands. Short, focused courses through a provider like Coursera can build the groundwork between shifts.
• Work nights, weekends, or charge shifts. Shift differentials and charge-nurse responsibility add to base pay directly and are a reliable route into the top quarter of earners.
• Bridge to RN. The clearest long-term raise isn’t an LPN raise at all. An LPN-to-RN bridge program changes your earning ceiling entirely, which the next section quantifies.

Job outlook for LPNs in Georgia

Georgia employs about 21,060 Licensed Practical Nurses, per the BLS (2025), one of the larger LPN workforces in the South. Demand concentrates in long-term care, skilled nursing, and outpatient settings, and Atlanta alone accounts for 9,710 of those jobs. An aging population keeps steady pressure on staffing in nursing and residential care facilities, which is exactly where LPN demand is strongest. For an active read on who’s hiring and at what pay across Georgia metros, a board like ZipRecruiter lets you filter by city and setting to see live openings.

Related and higher-paying roles in Georgia

If you’ve hit the top of the LPN scale, the next raise usually comes from a different credential. Here’s how nearby roles compare in Georgia, using BLS (2025) medians.

A Registered Nurse in Georgia earns a median of $93,550, which is $31,520 more than an LPN’s $62,030. That’s the single biggest step up available, and an LPN-to-RN bridge is the most common path Georgia LPNs take to reach it. Going the other direction, a Medical Assistant in Georgia earns a median of $41,600, which is $20,430 less than an LPN. That gap shows how much the LPN license is worth over an entry-level clinical role and is worth keeping in mind if you’re early in a healthcare career and deciding where to invest your training.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025 (occupation 29-2061); take-home estimates using 2026 federal and Georgia tax rules. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.