While the post-pandemic nursing workforce is showing signs of stabilizing, high levels of burnout, stress and dissatisfaction continue to threaten long-term workforce stability, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing’s biennial 2024 National Workforce Study.
The report surveyed more than 800,000 nurses in the U.S. and is considered the largest, most comprehensive report on the state of the nursing workforce.
Five key findings from the latest report:
1. More than 138,000 nurses have left the workforce since 2022. Apart from retirement, nurses pointed to stress, burnout, workload, understaffing, inadequate pay and workplace violence as the top reasons for exiting the field. This builds on an already sharp decline, with about 100,000 nurses who left the workforce in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the council’s last report on the nursing workforce conducted in 2022.
2. Nearly 40% of RNs said they intend to exit the field within the next five years. Of this group, about 22% planned to retire and 18% said they plan to leave for other reasons, namely stress and burnout. This equates to about 1.6 million nurses who could potentially leave the workforce, according to the council’s estimates.
3. Employment levels have rebounded slightly since 2022, with 88% of RN licenses and 71% of LPV/VN licenses actively employed. Another positive development: More than 73% of RNs hold a baccalaureate degree or higher, marking the highest educational level ever recorded by NCSBN. The nursing workforce is also becoming more racially diverse: 7.2% of nurses identified as Latino or Hispanic in 2024, up from 3.6% in 2015.
4. Since 2022, many experienced nurses who left during the pandemic returned to the workforce, restoring the median age to 50. While a welcome trend that has contributed to workforce stability in the short-term, researchers said this may “represent a more temporary phenomenon depending on their revised retirement timelines.”
5. “While we have seen some improvements, staffing challenges, stress and burnout, and workforce safety are issues that have permeated the nursing industry before, during and after the pandemic and are still challenges,” Phil Dickison, CEO of NCSBN, said in a news release on the findings. “We can no longer use COVID-19 as an excuse as to why nurses are leaving the workforce. We can infer that while hospitals continue to prioritize investments in mental health and other support services for nurses since the pandemic, structural issues that predated the pandemic remain.”
