Fact-checked against primary sources: BLS.gov, HRSA, AACN, and NCSBN. Last verified August 2026 against AACN’s own August 2026 update.

According to nursing shortage statistics, nursing schools turned away 92,672 qualified applications in 2025, not because interest in nursing is fading, but because there aren’t enough faculty, classroom seats, or clinical placements to teach them.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics still projects 189,100 RN job openings every single year through 2034, HRSA’s newest federal model puts the national RN shortage at 267,330 full-time nurses by 2028, and national RN turnover just climbed back to 17.6% in 2025, reversing two straight years of improvement.

Those four numbers alone tell you this isn’t one crisis,  it’s a training bottleneck, a demand curve, a distribution problem, and a retention reversal happening at the same time, and they don’t move together.

Below are the nursing shortage statistics that matter most, pulled directly from BLS, HRSA, AACN, NCSBN, and NSI Nursing Solutions, with the outdated figures still circulating elsewhere corrected.

Nursing Shortage Statistics at a Glance

  1. 189,100 — projected annual RN job openings through 2034 (BLS)

  2. 267,330 — projected national FTE RN shortage by 2028 (HRSA, December 2025)

  3. 17.6% — national RN turnover rate in 2025, up 1.2 points from 16.4% in 2024 (NSI Nursing Solutions, 2026 report)

  4. 5% — projected RN employment growth, 2024–2034 (BLS)

  5. 40.1% — projected growth for nurse practitioners specifically, the single fastest-growing U.S. occupation (BLS) [web:14]

  6. 92,672 — qualified nursing-program applications turned away in 2025 (AACN)

  7. 7.2% — national nursing faculty vacancy rate, 2025–2026 (AACN)

  8. 22% — California’s projected RN shortage by 2038, the largest of any state (HRSA)

  9. 30% — projected national LPN shortage by 2038 (HRSA)

  10. 138,000+ — nurses who left the workforce between 2022 and 2024 (NCSBN)

Nursing Shortage Statistics on RN Turnover in 2026

  1. National RN turnover rose to 17.6% in 2025, up 1.2 percentage points from 16.4% in 2024, reversing two consecutive years of gradual improvement — the first year-over-year increase since the post-pandemic peak, according to the 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report.

  2. Hospital-wide turnover across all roles reached 18.5% in the same report, drawn from data on 527 hospitals and 262,405 registered nurses — the largest survey sample NSI has published to date.

  3. Nearly 1 in 4 newly hired RNs (22.3%) leave their hospital within the first year, accounting for roughly 29% of all RN separations — meaning new-hire attrition, not long-tenured staff leaving, drives a disproportionate share of the churn behind the 189,100 annual BLS opening figure. [web:106]

  4. RN turnover varies from 5.6% to 40.0% depending on the hospital, and behavioral health units post the highest specialty-level turnover at 22.5% — a reminder that the 17.6% national average masks enormous variation by unit and region. [web:107][web:100]

  5. Each RN departure costs a hospital an average of $60,090 in recruitment, onboarding, and lost productivity, and NSI estimates a national RN shortage of 158,600 positions as of the 2026 report — a separate, current-year vacancy figure distinct from HRSA’s longer-range 267,330 projection.

Nursing Shortage Statistics on RN and Advanced-Practice Job Growth

  1. 189,100 RN job openings are projected annually through 2034, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the current federal figure, replacing the older 193,100/2032 estimate still repeated on many sites. Most of this figure reflects replacement demand from retirements and career changes, not net-new positions.

  2. The RN workforce itself is projected to grow 5%, from 3.39 million in 2024 to 3.56 million in 2034 — an increase of 166,100 nurses, according to BLS’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, as cited directly in AACN’s August 2026 fact sheet.

  3. Nurse practitioners are growing 40.1% through 2034 — the fastest of any healthcare occupation tracked by BLS — while the broader APRN category (NPs, nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives combined) is projected to grow 35%, with about 32,700 new APRN positions needed annually.

  4. The median RN salary was $93,600 in May 2024, the most recent BLS wage data available, useful context for recruitment and retention benchmarking.

Nursing Shortage Statistics on the Real National Gap (HRSA, December 2025)

This is where most nursing shortage statistics articles are outdated. The “263,870 by 2026” and “500,000+ by 2030” figures still circulating come from older model runs. HRSA’s current Nurse Workforce Projections, 2023–2038 brief, published December 2025, is the operative federal source, and AACN’s own August 2026 fact sheet confirms its headline number directly.

  1. HRSA projects a national shortage of 267,330 full-time-equivalent RNs by 2028 — the figure AACN itself now cites as the authoritative federal projection.

  2. The shortage narrows over time in HRSA’s model: 8% in 2028, tightening toward 3% by 2038 nationally as nursing-school output catches up with retirements — though the absolute FTE gap and percentage gap tell slightly different stories depending on population growth assumptions.

  3. LPNs face a steeper shortage than RNs: 30% by 2038, because LPN demand is projected to outpace supply throughout the entire 2023–2038 window — a gap that gets far less attention than the RN figures.

  4. Rural (nonmetro) shortages run 3 to 5 times deeper than urban ones at every checkpoint — for example, RN shortages of roughly 24% in nonmetro areas versus 5% in metro areas in 2028, narrowing to 11% versus 2% by 2038.

Nursing Shortage Statistics by State

  1. California has the largest projected RN shortage of any state: 22% by 2038.

  2. HRSA’s current top-ten list for 2038 is California (22%), North Carolina (20%), Georgia (20%), Michigan (18%), Washington (17%), Maryland (16%), Oklahoma (13%), South Carolina (12%), Louisiana (11%), and Virginia (8%) — a materially different list from the Texas/New Jersey/Alaska version still repeated on older sites.

  3. State-level data can be explored directly through HRSA’s Workforce Projections Dashboard, which AACN now links to as the primary tool for state-by-state comparisons rather than relying on secondary summaries.

Nursing Shortage Statistics on the Education Bottleneck (AACN, Updated August 2026)

  1. U.S. nursing schools turned away 92,672 qualified applications to baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2025 — the current AACN figure, replacing the roughly 65,000–80,000 estimates from earlier survey cycles. The reasons cited: insufficient faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, preceptors, and budget constraints.

  2. Nearly 17,000 of those rejected applications were for graduate nursing programs — a compounding problem, since most full-time nurse educator roles require a master’s or doctoral degree, meaning today’s rejections shrink tomorrow’s faculty pipeline.

  3. The national faculty vacancy rate is 7.2%, identified across 1,075 surveyed nursing schools (an 80.3% response rate) with 1,588 total full-time vacancies — and schools report needing 150 additional positions on top of that just to meet current student demand. Over 80% of those vacancies require or prefer a doctoral degree.

Nursing Shortage Statistics on Retirement and Workforce Exit

  1. 17% of RNs working in outpatient, ambulatory, and clinical settings have retired or plan to retire within five years, per the 2022 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, cited in AACN’s current fact sheet. More than 138,000 nurses left the workforce entirely between 2022 and 2024, according to NCSBN’s National Nursing Workforce Study, and a 2024 JAMA Network Open study of 7,887 nurses found the top reasons for leaving healthcare employment were planned retirement (39%), burnout (26%), insufficient staffing (21%), and family obligations (18%).

Why Nursing Shortage Statistics Disagree Across Sources

If three different “nursing shortage statistics” articles give you three different headline numbers, here’s why — each measures something distinct, and several popular sources are quoting outdated model years:

  • Job openings (BLS) count positions to fill each year, driven mostly by turnover and retirement — not a shortfall.

  • Turnover rate (NSI) measures how many currently employed RNs leave their hospital in a given year — a live, annual, employer-level metric that just rose to 17.6% after two years of decline.

  • Supply-demand adequacy (HRSA) asks whether the future workforce will be large enough at all, and HRSA revises this model roughly annually — a 2023 estimate and the December 2025 estimate can differ by hundreds of thousands.

  • Faculty and applicant-rejection data (AACN) tracks the training bottleneck and updates every survey cycle — the “8.8% faculty vacancy” figure quoted across the web is at least one cycle out of date; the current rate is 7.2%.

  • Workforce exit and burnout intent (NCSBN) measures retention risk directly from nurses, not a model projection.

National Nurses United has separately argued that RN supply is growing faster than the general population and that distribution and working conditions, not an absolute nurse deficit, explain most local staffing crises. [web:6] That argument gets harder to sustain against a rising turnover rate, but easier to sustain against HRSA’s own model, which narrows the national RN gap to single digits by the late 2030s rather than the 500,000+ figures some sites still cite.

What Nursing Shortage Statistics Reveal About the Root Causes

  • An aging population is expanding demand for chronic disease management, dementia care, and home health faster than earlier staffing models assumed.

  • Retirement and attrition compound faster than expected — 17% of clinical-setting RNs plan to retire within five years, and NCSBN’s data shows burnout accelerating departures ahead of schedule.

  • New-hire attrition is now a major driver, not just retirement. Nearly a quarter of newly hired RNs leave within their first year, which means onboarding and early-career support matter as much as recruitment volume. [web:106]

  • Burnout is the second-leading cause of nurse attrition, behind only planned retirement, according to the JAMA Network Open study AACN cites directly.

  • The education bottleneck is structural, not cyclical. Faculty vacancies, limited clinical placement sites, and preceptor shortages mean rising applicant interest doesn’t translate into more graduates — 92,672 rejected applications in a single year proves the gap is widening, not closing.

Burnout support matters here, and it’s worth being precise about what actually helps. Employer assistance programs and licensed mental health care remain the primary line of support for clinical burnout and compassion fatigue. Some nurses layer in complementary, non-clinical options — such as remote Ne Ste Al Mind Reprogramming sessions — alongside that care, not instead of it. Ne Ste Al does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical or psychiatric condition, and individual results vary; anyone experiencing burnout symptoms should speak with a licensed healthcare provider first.

How Leaders Are Responding to Nursing Shortage Statistics

  • Expand nurse residency programs and structured first-year mentorship — with 22.3% of new hires leaving within twelve months, onboarding quality is now as important as hiring volume. [web:106]

  • Fund faculty salaries and loan forgiveness for doctoral nurse educators — the graduate-program rejection rate (nearly 17,000 applications) is the leaking pipe that eventually shrinks the faculty pool itself.

  • Expand clinical placement and preceptor capacity, the constraint AACN cites as the top barrier to admitting more qualified students.

  • Target rural recruitment specifically — HRSA’s nonmetro-vs-metro gap shows national averages hide where the real crisis sits.

  • Treat burnout as a retention metric, not a wellness add-on — burnout ranks second only to retirement as a cause of nurse attrition, and NCSBN ties it directly to the 138,000+ nurses who’ve already left since 2022.

Frequently Asked Questions About Nursing Shortage Statistics

How severe is the nursing shortage right now, according to the most current data?

It depends on the measure. BLS shows steady, high annual job openings (189,100 RN openings/year through 2034) rather than a collapsing workforce, HRSA’s December 2025 model projects a national shortage of 267,330 full-time RNs by 2028, and RN turnover just rose to 17.6% in 2025 after two years of improvement — signaling the retention side of the crisis may be getting harder, not easier.

What do nursing shortage statistics show for 2030 and beyond?

HRSA’s current model narrows the national RN gap over time, from roughly 8% in 2028 toward single digits by the late 2030s, with wide variation by state. The commonly repeated “500,000+ by 2030” figure comes from an older, superseded model and should be treated as outdated.

Which states have the worst nursing shortages?

California’s RN gap is the largest in the country at 22% by 2038. AACN’s current top-ten list also includes North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Washington, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia — a different list from the Texas/New Jersey/Alaska version still circulating online.

What do nursing shortage statistics say is actually causing nurses to leave?

Planned retirement (39%) is the top reason, followed closely by burnout (26%), insufficient staffing (21%), and family obligations (18%), per a 2024 JAMA Network Open study of nearly 7,900 nurses cited by AACN. Separately, NCSBN found more than 138,000 nurses left the workforce between 2022 and 2024, and NSI’s 2026 report shows nearly a quarter of new hires leave within their first year on the job. [web:106]

Do nursing shortage statistics show the education bottleneck getting better or worse?

Worse, by AACN’s own current numbers. Qualified-applicant rejections rose to 92,672 in 2025, even as the national faculty vacancy rate sits at 7.2%. Faculty capacity, clinical placements, and preceptor availability — not student interest — remain the binding constraints.

Is RN turnover getting better or worse in 2026?

Worse, for the first time in two years. National RN turnover rose to 17.6% in 2025, up from 16.4% in 2024, according to the 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, which surveyed 527 hospitals and over 262,000 RNs.

Related

Nurse Shortage Statistics Hong Kong 2026

Nurse Turnover in U.S. Hospitals

Sources

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