Healthcare Workforce: Beyond the Registered Nurse Shortage

For the last several years, hospitals and vendors have been shouting from the rooftops: "There’s a nursing shortage! I can’t find nurses! Get more nurses!" And while I don’t want to invalidate this concern—given that the workforce is aging, and many individuals will retire in the coming years—I’ve come to a surprising realization. After diving deeper into the data, I am no longer convinced that Registered Nurses (RNs) are the biggest problem in healthcare.

But let's touch on Nursing briefly. The projected number of people permanently leaving the RN occupation annually stands at 31,202.15, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This departure rate is troubling, but the real challenge lies not in attracting new nurses but in keeping them. Looking at job openings and quit rates, there’s an uncanny correlation.

Healthcare has a serious quitting problem across the industry, and that makes retention one of the most challenging parts of the nursing issue. If we analyze the average tenure of an RN through Lightcast's data, we see that it ranks 40th out of 88 Healthcare Occupations. What’s causing this? It could be management styles, workloads, or the lure of lucrative travel nursing opportunities. Another possibility: wages were inflated during the pandemic, and now that they’ve decreased, we may see nurses staying put for a while.

Perhaps it’s all of the above (and if you want a deep dive on compensation trends and career pathways for Nurses, reach out and let's chat). Lightcast has data on worker job history that can enable analysis on career mobility and insights on wage data. I digress.

While Nursing is and has been a hot topic, I wanted to investigate the broader supply issue in healthcare, and what I found was surprising. The chart below shows the percentage of students completing degrees in CIP 51.38 (a classification of Nursing related degrees) through IPEDS data. From 2014 to 2022, the proportion of college students completing degrees in Nursing fields has been increasing. The graph below shows how the number of individuals completing nursing degrees continues to grow amongst enrolled student populations.

Even though Nursing has struggled with retaining workers, there are positive signs in educational data: the student population has been increasingly more focused and aware of nursing careers, seeing an increase in representation by completion percentage.

The real challenge lies elsewhere. Many of my clients have expressed concerns about the difficulties of finding and filling surgical techs, lab techs, and MRI techs. These allied health professionals—those who collaborate with physicians and other healthcare providers to care for patients—are becoming harder to find. And after delving into the data, I found that it’s these degrees, not nursing, that are facing the most significant decline in completions.

When we examine the pipeline for roles like surgical techs, clinical lab techs, and respiratory therapists, the numbers are stark. There’s a steep decline in the proportion of college students completing degrees in this field.

While RNs will continue to be crucial to healthcare, the key issue is retention, not recruitment. The solution might lie in changing management strategies, improving benefits such as childcare (since 89% of RNs are women), offering better maternity leave, or creating scholarships for employees’ children. A family-centered approach could make a significant difference in retention. 

There is also room to discuss a need to decrease the responsibilities that RNs are currently tasked with and return the RN program from a 4-year degree back down to a 2-year degree as it was many years ago. This would enable hospitals to pull from the talent pool sooner and allow workers to get on-the-job training faster and likely at a more cost-effective point for the business.

For allied health roles, though, the focus needs to shift to recruitment. We need to get high school students excited about pursuing degrees in allied health fields. This could look like internships and rotation programs or more "a day in the life" videos with staff.

With enrollments projected to decline due the shrinking population of 18-year-olds after 2026, this problem is only going to worsen. We need to start pulling young talent into these vital career paths before the shortage becomes unmanageable.

To learn more about global trends in labor shortages, AI, and geopolitics, read our latest research, Fault Lines.

Nursing will always be a cornerstone of healthcare, but the more imminent threat to healthcare’s success lies in the rapidly disappearing workforce of allied health professionals. The question isn’t how we attract more nurses—it's about retaining the ones we have. And for allied health roles, it’s about building a pipeline of talent from the ground up.

I’d like to hear if these challenges are resonating with you, or if there are different challenges that are even more pressing. Let me know in the comments or send me a message on LinkedIn, I’d love to connect.