Nursing: Supply and Demand through 2020

Nursing: Supply and DemandAnthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith and Artem Gulish

February 25, 2015

Nursing Projections 2020• There are 3.5 million nursing professionals

working today.

• There will be 1.6

million job

openings for

nurses between

2010 and 2020.

Nursing Job Openings

• 1.2 million openings for registered nurses

• 370,000 openings for licensed practical nurses

• 700,000 of these job openings are newly created while

880,000 jobs will become available due to Baby Boomers’

retirement.

• The demand for nurses remains robust, while job openings

account for 1.6 million open positions between 2010 and

2020.

• The current demand is 3.5 million and will be 4.15 million in

2020.

3.5 Million

4.15 Million

What’s the demand for nurses?

12Average number of U.S. nursing professionals per 1000 residents.

Did you know that nursing is the largest of all licensed health professions in the U.S.?

North Dakota, Washington D.C., and Rhode Island have the highest concentration of nursing professionals, while California, Georgia, and Nevada have the lowest.

The nursing profession offers some of the best career

opportunities for qualified job seekers, with the

largest expected job growth of any occupation

and the highest annual median wage of the top

ten occupations with the largest expected job growth. 1

1 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-13 Edition. (2012).

1 Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) 1980- 2008.2 Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), What Is Behind HRSA’s Projected Supply, Demand, and Shortage of Registered Nurses? (September, 2004). 3 Aiken, L.H. and Cheung. Nurse Workforce Challenges in the United States: Implications for Policy. OECD Health Working Papers, No.35. (2008).

• Driven by a growing aging U.S. population, increased health coverage and disposable income, and changing health care delivery models, the nursing profession has been experiencing steady growth from the 1980s to present. 1,2

• The growth of nursing professionals has been so rapid that the U.S. currently has the largest nursing workforce in the world. 3 It is poised to continue growing.

Shortage

• We estimate that by 2020,The United States could face a shortfall of 193,000 nurses.

• Individuals who will be unable to get into the profession

• Health care institutions being unable to recruit sufficient

nursing workforce

• Patient safety and quality of care

1 Aiken, L.H. and Cheung. Nurse Workforce Challenges in the United States: Implications for Policy. OECD Health Working Papers, No.35. (2008).

Failure to prepare for incoming cohorts and failure to train a sufficient number of nurses will have major consequences for:

• The lack of capacity at nursing schools creates a bottleneck in the supply of nurses

• Both ADN and BSN nursing programs fall short of meeting demand

• Lack of faculty and lack of clinical placements are the two major hurdles to training more nurses

• While the demand for more educated nurses is on the rise, the supply cannot keep up due to rising demands on limited number of doctoral nursing faculty.

• Doctoral nurses cannot train a sufficient number of new doctoral nurses and more BSN and MSN nurses at the same time.

For more information:See the full report and executive

summary on http://cew.georgetown.edu/reports/NursingProjections

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