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HUMAN CAPITAL Career Trends
Nursing Workforce Mobility in a Changing Global Landscape
The sustainability of a country's economic growth depends on the supply of its capital goods, labor force, technology, and human capital. In the same sense country's health rely mainly on the supply and mobility of its healthcare workers.
As the largest occupational group in health globally, the nursing workforce has been consistently identified as central to addressing global health challenges.
There are almost 28 million nursing personnel globally (World Health Organization, 2020), comprising the most significant proportion of the health workforce (59%), with nurses likely the first clinical contact for those presenting to health services and making up to 90% of patient/clinician contacts.
The nursing workforce is critical to the healthcare system's response to current and any future widespread health emergencies.
It is estimated that the world will need an additional nine million nurses and midwives by 2030.
Given these projections, enhanced nurse mobility can be anticipated and expected.
According to The American Nurses Association (ANA), more registered nurse jobs will be available through 2022 than in any other profession in the United States.
The U.S. Government and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics project that 11 million additional nurses are needed to avoid a further shortage.
Nurses' employment opportunities are projected to grow at a faster rate (15%) than all other occupations from 2016 through 2026.
In February 2022, there were over 3 million open nursing jobs in the United States.
And it is not only a U.S. problem. In fact, the aging nursing workforce, and an aging population have become a global challenge and as a fix to this, but there also is a high demand for Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) in developed countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Projected RN Shortages by State Registered Nurse shortages by State, projected 2030.
California tops the list with an estimated 44,500 deficit in registered nurses, nearly three times the deficit in the next shortest state. Texas, New Jersey, and South Carolina will lack more than 10,000 RNs; Alaska, Georgia and South Dakota will each be short several thousand.
On the flip side, Florida will have far too many RNs, with a projected overage of 53,700 nurses. Ohio comes close with 49,100 more registered nurses than it will need. Virginia, New York, Missouri, and North Carolina are estimated to have more than 15,000 extra RNs.
California and Florida are huge states with already high numbers of registered nurse positions. How does the shortage look when we take the size of the workforce into account? We ranked states based on the percentage of the registered nurse workforce that is projected to be vacant or overfilled.
