50 states ranked by amount of active nurses

California contains the most professionally active registered nurses in the U.S. with 337,738 RNs, according to a ranking from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The ranking is based on October 2018 data compiled by Redi-Data from state licensing information, website submissions and surveys. The figures count professionally active nurses who work in and outside clinical settings.

In total, nearly 3.4 million professionally active RNs are working in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Here's how each state stacks up:

1. California —337,738 professionally active RNs
2. Texas — 262,710
3. Florida — 248,709
4. Pennsylvania — 172,837
5. Ohio — 171,502
6. Illinois — 156,625
7. New York — 145,094
8. Michigan — 125,440
9. Georgia — 102,154
10. Massachusetts — 100,806
11. Indiana — 99,087
12. New Jersey — 98,631
13. Virginia — 90,939
14. Tennessee — 80,104
15. Missouri — 79,805
16. Minnesota — 77,381
17. North Carolina — 72,559
18. Maryland — 71,615
19. Alabama — 64,966
20. Colorado — 58,753
21. Kentucky — 58,666
22. Arizona — 55,176
23. Washington — 47,415
24. Connecticut — 45,261
25. Iowa — 43,391
26. Mississippi — 40,612
27. Oklahoma — 39,626
28. South Carolina — 36,792
29. Arkansas — 35,430
30. Louisiana — 33,793
31. Oregon — 31,239
32. Kansas — 29,047
33. Wisconsin — 27,856
34. Nevada — 25,181
35. Nebraska — 25,155
36. West Virginia — 22,448
37. Maine — 20,259
38. New Mexico — 19,545
39. Idaho — 18,234
40. Utah — 14,835
41. Rhode Island — 13,746
42. Montana — 13,050
43. South Dakota — 12,945
44. New Hampshire — 10,643
45. North Dakota — 9,167
46. Delaware — 8,842
47. Alaska — 7,924
48. Vermont — 7,801
49. Wyoming — 2,900
50. Hawaii — 2,481