Category Archives: Nurse Vacancy Rates

The changing face of the nursing workforce

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Last week we discussed how hospitals are still struggling to retain talent. This week’s graphic offers one explanation for this trend: 

a significant share of older nurses, who continued to work during the height of the pandemic, have now exited the workforce, and health systems are even more reliant on younger nurses. 

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of nurses ages 65 and older decreased by 200K, resulting in a reduction of that age cohort from 19 percent to 13 percent of the total nursing workforce. While the total number of nurses in the workforce still increased, the younger nurses filling these roles are both earlier in their nursing careers (thus less experienced), and more likely to change jobs. 

Case in point:

From 2019 to 2023, the average tenure of a hospital nurse dropped by 22 percent. The wave of Baby Boomer nurse retirements has also resulted in a 33 percent decrease from 2020 to 2022 in the number of registered nurses who have been licensed for over 40 years. 

Given these shifts, hospitals must adjust their current recruitment, retention, training, and mentorship initiatives to match the needs of younger, early-career nurses.

Hospitals still struggling to retain talent

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Of all the pandemic’s impacts still felt today, disruptions to the healthcare workforce and rising labor costs may be most impactful to current health system operations.

Over the next three editions of the Weekly Gist, we’ll be exploring the lingering effects of this workforce crisis, with a focus on nurse staffing and recruitment.


In this week’s graphic, we use data from the 2023 NSI National Health Care Retention Report to show how hospital turnover and vacancy rates have changed over the past several years. 

While wage increases helped reduce hospital registered nurse (RN) turnover rates from 27 percent in 2021 to 23 percent in 2022, nurses—along with hospital employees in general—are still changing jobs at higher rates than before the pandemic.

Over half of all hospitals still face nurse vacancy rates above 15 percent, a slight improvement from 2022 but still far more than before the pandemic.

While the worst of nursing turnover appears to have passed, the “rebasing” of wages (for nursing, 27 percent higher compared to 2019) will provide ongoing pressure to strained hospital margins.