Rounds with Leadership: Following Nursing Workforce Trends: Part I

As nurse educators, we play a pivotal role in sustaining the healthcare workforce and ensuring access to care for all Americans. The nation’s schools of nursing are responsible for maintaining multiple pathways into the profession and preparing new graduates to practice across settings. Understanding how the professional landscape is evolving helps to inform our decision-making around adapting programs to best meet local and national needs.

Keeping up with workforce developments starts with accessing reputable and comprehensive data. At the national level, two excellent sources are maintained through surveys conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN).

The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN), administered by HRSA every four years, represents the longest running survey of RNs in the U.S. Introduced in 1977, the survey examines the characteristics of RNs, job satisfaction, workplace preferences, and individual experiences in the field. Key findings from the most recent NSSRN, released in 2022, show that the nursing workforce is becoming more diverse, more highly educated, but less satisfied with professional practice. The data show the effects of COVID-19 on the profession, while workforce projections point to shortages increasing in nursing occupations through 2036.

Featuring data collected through the Sample Survey, the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis maintains a web-based Nursing Workforce Dashboard to facilitate comparisons between the 2018 and 2022 surveys. This tool allows users to explore trends in RN and APRN demographics, employment, education, well-being, earnings, and other variables. Researchers, faculty, and students can analyze specific data subsets using filters by location, license type, and employment status, to name a few.

In addition to the NSSRN, the NCSBN conducts a national survey of RNs and LPNs every two years in partnership with The National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers. Launched in 2013, the National Nursing Workforce Study is an important source of current information on the supply of nurses in the country, including data on demographics, education level, licensure, employment patterns, earnings, planned retirement, and experiences with stress and burnout.

In the April 2025 Journal of Nursing Regulation, Richard Smiley and colleagues from NCSBN published results from the 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey, which found:

• The total number of active RN licenses in the U.S. is 5,641,311; 88% of nurses who maintain licensure are employed in nursing.
• 51.5% of RNs now enter the workforce with a baccalaureate (46%) or entry-level master’s degree (5.5%).72.9% of RNs are educated at the baccalaureate or graduate degree level, a new high point for the profession.
• Most RNs practice in hospitals (53%), followed by ambulatory care settings (11.5%), nursing homes/extended care (4.7%), and community health (2.3%).
• The median age of RNs is 50 years, an increase of 4 years since 2022.
• 40% of RNs plan to leave nursing or retire over the next 5 years.
• Top reasons cited by RNs for leaving the workforce aside from retirement include stress and burnout; workload; understaffing; inadequate salary; and workplace violence.

In addition to the surveys conducted by HRSA and NCSBN, other essential sources of nursing data include the following:

• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes an Occupational Outlook each year for both Registered Nurses and Nurse Anesthetists, Nurse Midwives, and Nurse Practitioners, which includes a career overview and current data on educational expectations, job outlook, salary, role expectations, working environment, and related indicators.
• The American Organization for Nursing Leadership conducts Nursing Leadership Insight Studies to assess specific trends and emerging issues in the profession. The latest installment, released in March 2025, presents findings on nurse leaders’ challenges, such as staffing, workplace violence, emotional well-being, and innovation.
• Published each year in the January issue of The Nurse Practitioner, the Annual APRN Legislative Update describes recent legislative changes to practice, reimbursement, and prescriptive authority that impact NPs and other advanced practice nurses. The 37^th annual update was released in January 2025.

Beyond these sources, specialty nursing organizations, state nursing workforce centers, consulting firms, health services researchers, and nurse scientists conduct studies throughout the year that add to our knowledge about the workforce. AACN will continue to synthesize relevant findings and data points from these sources in our newsletters and on our Industry News webpage to keep members and stakeholders informed about emerging developments in academic nursing.

In next month’s Rounds with Leadership column, we will focus exclusively on findings from the nation’s leading source for data on professional nursing education, AACN’s annual surveys of baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs. Now in its 44th year, our survey populates the nation's premier database on trends in nursing school enrollments and graduations, student and faculty demographics, and faculty and dean salaries. These data are essential for policymaking at the local, state, and federal levels as well as for benchmarking by participating institutions.