CNA Salary in Florida by Metro - Adjusted for Cost of Living

A one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent takes 61 percent of a Miami CNA's gross paycheck. Among America's 50 largest metros, only San Jose and San Diego are harsher, and CNAs there earn $5 to $9 an hour more than Miami's $18.28. Every salary article about CNAs in Florida quotes the same number: somewhere around $18 an hour. We have trained CNAs in Florida since 2008, and we can tell you that number hides more than it reveals.

So we built what we could not find published anywhere else: the median CNA wage in every one of Florida's 22 metro areas, adjusted for what things actually cost in each one, plus what a one-bedroom apartment takes out of the paycheck. State-level cost-of-living salary tables exist; a metro-level, rent-burden-included analysis for Florida CNAs did not. Everything comes from federal data (Bureau of Labor Statistics wages, Bureau of Economic Analysis price levels, and HUD fair market rents), combined in a way none of those agencies does on its own. The full methodology is at the bottom, and you are free to cite or republish any of it with a link back to this page.

Key Findings

• A one-bedroom apartment at HUD fair market rent costs a Miami CNA 61 percent of gross pay. That is the third-highest CNA rent burden among the 50 largest U.S. metros, behind only San Jose and San Diego, where CNAs earn $23 to $27 an hour to Miami's $18.28. Miami is also where the most Florida CNAs work (23,490), and its price-adjusted pay of $16.01 is the lowest in the state.
• Three of the seven harshest big-metro rent burdens for CNAs in America are in Florida: Miami (61 percent), Orlando (55 percent), and Tampa (54 percent). At the other end of the state's table, Sebring's rent burden is 34 percent.
• Florida CNA pay trails the nation by more than the headline numbers admit. The state median of $18.03 is 11 percent below the national median of $20.32, but Florida's cost of living now runs 3.4 percent above the national average, so the real gap is about 14 percent, or roughly $6,000 a year.
• On paper, the best real pay in Florida is Wildwood-The Villages, where $17.36 stretches to $20.32 an hour at the metro's unusually low official price level. Read that ranking with care: the metro employs just 600 CNAs, and its price index is skewed by a nearly rental-free retirement housing market (details in the methodology). By the steadier rent-burden measure, Sebring and Homosassa Springs are the state's most livable CNA metros.
• The highest concentration of CNA jobs in Florida is not in the big cities. Homosassa Springs has 23.9 CNA jobs per 1,000 jobs (two and a half times the state average of 9.8), followed by Sebring and Gainesville. Small retirement metros are where CNAs are proportionally most needed.

How Much Do CNAs Make in Each Florida Metro?

The table below ranks all 22 Florida metropolitan areas by cost-of-living-adjusted median CNA wage. The RPP column is the metro's overall price level from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, where 100 equals the national average. The adjusted wage is the median wage divided by that price level, which is what the paycheck is worth in national-average dollars.

#	Metro area	Median CNA wage	Price level (RPP)	Adjusted wage	1BR fair market rent	Rent as % of gross pay
1	Wildwood-The Villages	$17.36	85.4	$20.32	$1,139	37.9%
2	Sebastian-Vero Beach	$18.52	98.3	$18.84	$1,222	38.1%
3	Naples-Marco Island	$19.36	103.2	$18.76	$1,797	53.6%
4	North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota	$19.21	102.4	$18.76	$1,686	50.6%
5	Sebring	$17.14	92.5	$18.54	$1,006	33.9%
6	Ocala	$17.56	95.2	$18.44	$1,172	38.5%
7	Gainesville	$17.79	96.7	$18.39	$1,246	40.4%
8	Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin	$17.77	97.0	$18.31	$1,581	51.3%
9	Jacksonville	$18.15	99.5	$18.24	$1,382	43.9%
10	Port St. Lucie	$18.12	100.2	$18.08	$1,467	46.7%
11	Panama City	$17.51	97.3	$18.00	$1,480	48.8%
12	Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent	$17.51	97.7	$17.92	$1,257	41.4%
13	Deltona-Daytona Beach	$17.76	99.4	$17.87	$1,385	45.0%
14	Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford	$18.12	101.4	$17.87	$1,731	55.1%
15	Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater	$18.02	100.9	$17.86	$1,696	54.3%
16	Lakeland-Winter Haven	$17.31	97.1	$17.82	$1,230	41.0%
17	Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville	$17.82	100.0	$17.82	$1,478	47.9%
18	Homosassa Springs	$16.59	93.5	$17.75	$988	34.4%
19	Cape Coral-Fort Myers	$18.04	102.3	$17.63	$1,638	52.4%
20	Punta Gorda	$17.64	100.5	$17.55	$1,167	38.2%
21	Tallahassee	$16.43	93.9	$17.49	$1,204	42.3%
22	Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach	$18.28	114.2	$16.01	$1,942	61.3%

A caveat on the top spot before you pack a moving truck: The Villages' price level (85.4) is the lowest of any Florida metro almost entirely because BEA's housing index there is 51.7, half the national average, a figure produced by a retirement metro where nearly everyone owns and almost nobody rents. HUD's fair market rent for the same metro is $1,139, and by rent burden The Villages (37.9 percent) is actually harsher on a renting CNA than Sebring or Homosassa Springs. It is also the smallest CNA market in the table, at 600 jobs. Metros separated by less than about fifty cents of adjusted wage are statistical ties, not rankings.

Benchmarks: Florida statewide median $18.03 (adjusted $17.43 at the state price level of 103.4). United States median $20.32. Wage data covers 96,960 employed CNAs in Florida.

CNA Pay in Miami vs. the Cost of Living

Miami is where Florida CNA jobs are: nearly one in four CNAs in the state works in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro. It posts one of the highest nominal wages in Florida. And it is still, by a wide margin, the worst place in the state to live on a CNA paycheck. Prices in the Miami metro run about 14 percent above the national average, which turns $18.28 an hour into $16.01 of real purchasing power. Rent is the sharpest edge: at HUD's fair market rent, a one-bedroom apartment consumes 61 percent of a Miami CNA's gross income. That is the third-highest burden among the 50 largest U.S. metros, and the highest anywhere in America among big metros where CNAs earn under $20 an hour. The standard affordability benchmark is 30 percent.

The practical takeaway for new CNAs is not "avoid Miami." It is that a job offer in Ocala or Gainesville at $17.50 can genuinely beat an offer in Miami at $18.50, and the difference gets bigger every year rents climb. If you have family in both places, the numbers say the smaller metro wins.

How Does Florida CNA Pay Compare to Other Large U.S. Metros?

To put Florida in context, we ran the same rent-burden math for the 50 most populous U.S. metros. Florida owns three of the seven harshest: Miami at #3, Orlando at #5, and Tampa at #7. Unlike the California metros above them, Florida's CNAs carry that burden on sub-$19 wages. The ten harshest:

#	Metro	Median CNA wage	1BR fair market rent	Rent share of gross pay
1	San Jose, CA	$27.33	$2,982	62.9%
2	San Diego, CA	$23.11	$2,459	61.4%
3	Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL	$18.28	$1,942	61.3%
4	Los Angeles, CA	$22.78	$2,245	56.9%
5	Orlando, FL	$18.12	$1,731	55.1%
6	New York, NY-NJ	$23.69	$2,260	55.0%
7	Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	$18.02	$1,696	54.3%
8	Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	$21.99	$2,015	52.9%
9	San Francisco, CA	$26.96	$2,465	52.8%
10	Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	$18.53	$1,648	51.3%

The full 50-metro table is in the downloadable national dataset below. Cleveland is excluded this cycle because BLS suppressed its metro wage estimate.

Florida CNA Pay vs. the National Average

Florida's CNA median of $18.03 sits 11 percent below the national median of $20.32. For years the standard consolation was "but Florida is cheap." That is no longer true: the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts Florida's overall price level at 103.4 percent of the national average as of 2024. Florida is now a more expensive state than the typical American state, driven by housing costs that run 22 percent above the national average. Adjust for that and the real gap between a Florida CNA and the median American CNA is about 14 percent, roughly $6,000 a year in purchasing power.

We publish this not to discourage anyone but because it is the truth, and because it cuts the other way too: CNA work in Florida is the fastest on-ramp into healthcare, and the wage data is the strongest argument for treating a CNA license as a first step rather than a destination. The pay ladder from CNA to LPN to RN is steep in Florida precisely because the base rung is low.

Which Florida Metros Have the Most CNA Jobs?

Employment concentration tells you where demand is structurally strongest. Statewide, CNAs make up 9.8 of every 1,000 jobs. In Homosassa Springs it is 23.9, the highest concentration in Florida and roughly two and a half times the state average, followed by Sebring (19.2) and Gainesville (19.0). These are retirement and healthcare hub metros where a new CNA license is worth the most interviews. The big metros hire more CNAs in absolute numbers (Miami 23,490, Tampa 15,120, Orlando 12,000), but you are one résumé among many there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average CNA salary in Florida in 2026?

The median CNA wage in Florida is $18.03 per hour (about $37,500 per year full-time), per the May 2025 BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics released in spring 2026. The mean is $18.83. Individual metros range from $16.43 (Tallahassee) to $19.36 (Naples). To estimate your own paycheck, see our CNA salary calculator.

Which Florida city pays CNAs the most?

In nominal dollars, Naples-Marco Island ($19.36 median). Adjusted for cost of living, Wildwood-The Villages tops the table ($17.36 nominal, worth $20.32 at national-average prices), but it is a 600-CNA metro with a housing-skewed price index (see the methodology). By rent burden, Sebring is the state's most livable CNA metro.

Is CNA pay in Florida higher or lower than the national average?

Lower. Florida's median of $18.03 is 11 percent below the national median of $20.32, and because Florida's cost of living now runs above the national average, the gap in real purchasing power is about 14 percent.

How much of a CNA paycheck goes to rent in Florida?

At HUD fair market rent for a one-bedroom, between 34 percent of gross pay (Sebring) and 61 percent (Miami metro). Miami's is the third-highest among the 50 largest U.S. metros. Ten of Florida's 22 metros are above 45 percent; the standard affordability benchmark is 30 percent.

Methodology and Sources

Wages: median hourly wage for Nursing Assistants (SOC 31-1131) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, May 2025 estimates (released April 2026), for all 22 Florida metropolitan statistical areas, Florida statewide, and the United States.

Price levels: Regional Price Parities (all-items, 2024 vintage, released early 2026) from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The adjusted wage is the median wage divided by (RPP ÷ 100), expressing every metro's pay in national-average dollars.

Rents: HUD Fair Market Rents, FY2026, one-bedroom, for each metro's HUD Metro FMR Area. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach figure is the population-weighted average of its three HUD metro divisions (Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall $1,995; Fort Lauderdale $1,900; West Palm Beach-Boca Raton $1,901). Rent share of gross pay = 1BR FMR ÷ (median hourly wage × 173.33 hours per month). Actual take-home share is higher, since this is calculated on gross pay.

Two measures, two questions: the price-adjusted wage says what a paycheck buys across the full basket of goods and services; the rent share says what housing alone takes from a renter. For a renting CNA early in a career, the rent share is usually the more honest guide. The all-items basket reflects average-household spending, and CNAs spend a larger share of income on housing than the average household. Where the two measures disagree, as they do for The Villages, trust the rent share.

Each series is the most recent available, and their reference periods differ: wages are May 2025, price parities are calendar 2024, and fair market rents are federal fiscal year 2026 (built from 2023 rent survey data inflated forward). Adjusted wages within about $0.50 of each other should be treated as statistical ties given BLS sampling error, especially in metros with fewer than 1,000 CNAs. The national comparison covers the 50 most populous U.S. metros by HUD 2023 population, minus Cleveland (wage estimate suppressed this cycle). We refresh this page each spring, after BLS releases new May wage estimates.

Caveats: OEWS medians describe all employed CNAs in a metro, not starting wages; new CNAs typically start below the median. County carve-out FMR areas inside an MSA (for example Baker County within the Jacksonville MSA) are excluded in favor of the core metro area. Metro definitions follow the 2023 OMB delineations used by both BLS and BEA.

How to Use and Cite This Data

This dataset is free to cite, quote, chart, or republish, including for news stories, research, and policy work, with attribution and a link to this page.

• Download the Florida dataset (CSV): wages, price levels, adjusted wages, rents, rent burden, and employment for all 22 metros.
• Download the national comparison (CSV): CNA rent burden across the 50 largest U.S. metros.

Media: we are glad to provide custom cuts, per-metro graphics, or comment on the data. Email [email protected].

Changelog

Version 1, July 2026. First edition: May 2025 BLS wages, 2024 BEA price parities, FY2026 HUD fair market rents. Next refresh: spring 2027.