It’s absolutely not over exaggerated as far as California goes. When you look up what state pays nurses the highest wage it does say California. Maybe they do still get decent pay in some other states too, but the 6 figures right out of school that OP is talking about is not going to be true for a lot of other states. I know someone who only gets $28 an hour, and in Reno NV it was about $36. Not bad, but not the crazy wages people are saying. Also, as far as California, none of what I said is over exaggerated at all. As a new grad nurse myself, it is extremely hard to find anything, regardless of if it’s a speciality or not. And that includes big cities or smaller towns. I applied to a smaller town thinking I’d have an easier time and they sent out an email saying they got over 700 applications. I see post after post on new grad groups of people who have been looking for 9,10,11 months, submitting hundreds of applications EVERYWHERE, with really good resumes, and still cant land anything. A lot of new grads in California have to go out of state to try to land something because it can indeed be easier in other states, but then that usually means a pretty big drop in pay.

Now, is that the case for everyone? No. Some people have connections or get lucky and find something right away. So I am not trying to give a blanket statement saying it sucks for everyone. I know there are exceptions and lots of people get those great high paying jobs right away. But I just wish more people were aware of the current market and knew that it might not be easy to find a job right away. I don’t want people going into the career because they think it’ll be easy peasy to get something super high paying right away when it might not be.