It is an unsettled question whether increasing wages constitute a viable policy for extracting more labor supply from nurses. In this paper we use a unique matched panel data set of Norwegian nurses covering the period 1993-1997 to estimate wage elasticities. The estimated elasticity when controlling for individual and time invariant fixed effects is significantly positive but not very high in magnitude. We have also access to information about contractual arrangements. It turns out that shift work is important for hours of work, and that omitting information about this common phenomenon will underestimate the wage effect.