The pandemic ended. Nursing workforce numbers recovered.
And yet nurses are still leaving.
A 2023 JAMA study found that more than one in four U.S. nurses planned to leave the profession.¹ The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an average of 193,100 RN job openings per year through 2032, a figure that accounts for both retirement and ongoing workforce attrition.² The American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported that a 2022 American Nurses Association survey found 60% of acute care nurses experiencing burnout.³
The reasons this time are different from what drove the 2020 and 2021 exodus.
What Changed — and What Didn't
During the pandemic, the drivers of departure were acute and visible. COVID exposure risk. Unprecedented patient volumes. Physical and emotional strain at a scale the profession had not encountered before. And the financial pull of travel nursing, which offered significantly higher pay for nurses willing to take contracts.
The departures happening now are quieter, and more structural.
Workload has not decreased. Demand for healthcare services continues to rise with an aging population, and unfilled vacancies mean remaining nurses absorb more patients per shift. AACN cites research showing that adding just one patient to a nurse's assignment is associated with a significant increase in infection rates.³ The work is heavier, and the staffing to share it is thinner.
Burnout has not resolved. NCSBN research identified over 610,000 RNs who reported intent to leave the workforce by 2027, driven by stress, burnout, and retirement.⁴ These are not pandemic-era numbers. They reflect a workforce that did not fully recover between the crisis and whatever comes next.
The education pipeline is not keeping pace. In 2023, nursing schools across the U.S. turned away 65,766 qualified applicants due to faculty shortages, insufficient clinical placement capacity, and budget constraints.³ The supply of new graduates cannot fill the gap at the rate it is being created.
How the Cycle Works
When a nurse leaves, the nurses who remain carry more. When the workload increases, burnout deepens. When burnout deepens, the next nurse begins to consider leaving. A vacancy opens. It takes 78 days, on average, to fill.³
During those 78 days, the pressure on the remaining staff does not pause. It compounds. The next departure is often decided somewhere inside that window.
The fastest point of intervention in this cycle is not always where it seems. Most workforce retention strategies focus on the nurses already in place: wellness programs, scheduling flexibility, compensation adjustments. These matter. But they address the symptom after the cycle has already started turning.
Closing vacancies faster interrupts the cycle at an earlier point. When a position is filled sooner, the workload pressure on remaining staff decreases sooner. The conditions that lead to the next departure improve before they deteriorate further.
Supply Is Not the Only Variable
Most discussions of the nursing shortage focus on the supply side: more nursing schools, more seats, more faculty. These are long-term interventions, and they are necessary. But their effects reach the bedside years after the investment is made.
In the meantime, the nurses already in hospitals are absorbing the gap. The conditions that allow them to stay, or that push them toward leaving, are being shaped right now, in part by how quickly vacancies around them get filled.
Hiring speed is not the only answer to the nursing shortage. But it is one of the few variables that hospitals can act on today, and its effects move through the cycle faster than most of the alternatives.
Sources
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Suran M. "Overworked and Understaffed, More Than 1 in 4 US Nurses Say They Plan to Leave the Profession." JAMA. 2023;330(16):1512. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2810568
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Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Registered Nurses. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
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AACN. Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet. American Association of Colleges of Nursing. https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage
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NCSBN. "NCSBN Research Projects Significant Nursing Workforce Shortages and Crisis." https://www.ncsbn.org/news/ncsbn-research-projects-significant-nursing-workforce-shortages-and-crisis
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NSI Nursing Solutions, Inc. 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report. March 2026. https://www.nsinursingsolutions.com/documents/library/nsi_national_health_care_retention_report.pdf