Nursing Shortage Statistics 2026: What Every CNO Needs to Know

The Numbers Behind the Shortage — Without the Drama

A CNO at a 180-bed community hospital recently described her Monday-morning routine: open the staffing spreadsheet, count the open RN lines, subtract the agency commitments, and decide whether she had enough coverage to avoid calling in the float pool for the third consecutive weekend. She had been doing this for two years. The spreadsheet had never once warned her it was coming.

That story is not unusual. What has changed is that the workforce data now available — from NSI, BLS, HRSA, and other primary sources — gives nursing leaders a far clearer picture of the structural forces behind those Monday mornings than was available even three years ago. The shortage is real, it is measurable, and, importantly, it is not uniform: some facilities and unit types are under considerably more pressure than others, and the national aggregate conceals variation that matters for planning.

This article assembles the most current nursing shortage statistics for 2026 — turnover, vacancy, wage, and supply-demand projections — and interprets what each means for a CNO, Director of Nursing, or healthcare HR leader at a 50–300-bed hospital or skilled-nursing facility. The goal is not alarm. It is a sober, sourced foundation for workforce planning decisions you are likely already trying to make.

By the end, you will have the key figures, their sources, and a structured way to apply them to your own facility's headcount.

What the 2026 Turnover Data Actually Says

The most widely cited benchmark for hospital RN turnover comes from NSI Nursing Solutions, Inc., which publishes an annual national survey drawing on a large, consistent dataset. The 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report — covering 527 hospitals, 40 states, 965,886 healthcare workers, and 262,405 RNs — places the national staff RN turnover rate at 17.6% for 2025, an increase of 1.2 percentage points, reversing the prior year's decline (NSI 2026, via Becker's Hospital Review, 2026).

That reversal matters. The 2024 rate of 16.4% — itself down 2.4 points from the year before — had generated cautious optimism that post-pandemic normalization was underway (NSI 2025, via Becker's, 2025). The 2025 uptick is a reminder that structural pressures have not resolved; they have moderated from their acute-phase peaks, but remain elevated above the rates many facilities used for pre-pandemic workforce planning.

What 17.6% means in practical terms. For a facility with 120 staff RNs, a 17.6% annual turnover rate implies roughly 21 departures per year — or approximately one departure every 2.5 weeks. Each departure carries an estimated cost of $60,090 (NSI 2026, via Becker's, 2026), making the annualized cost model for that facility approximately $1.26 million per year. This is a worked example using the NSI benchmark and a round FTE count; actual costs at your facility will vary based on unit type, role seniority, and agency coverage. The NSI figure is the product's default cost-per-departure assumption and is configurable in-app.

The range behind that 17.6% national average is also important. NSI 2026 data shows RN turnover by hospital bed count ranging from 5.6% to 40.0% in 2025 (NSI 2026, via Becker's, 2026). A facility at the high end of that range is operating in a structurally different environment than one near the low end — and both may report the same national average when asked by a board.

For a deeper treatment of how to calculate and interpret your own facility's turnover rate, see our guide to nursing workforce analytics.

Vacancy Rates and Time-to-Fill: The Costs That Accumulate Between Departures

Turnover rate tells you how often nurses leave. Vacancy rate tells you how many positions you are unable to fill at any given time. In 2025, the national RN vacancy rate was 8.6%, with an average of 43 unfilled RN FTEs per hospital — and 33.1% of hospitals reporting vacancy rates at or above 10% (NSI 2026, via Becker's, 2026).

Those unfilled positions are not cost-neutral. The average time-to-fill for an experienced RN — measured by NSI's Recruitment Difficulty Index — was 78 days in 2025 (NSI 2026, via Kahuna Workforce, 2026). For most facilities, a vacancy that takes 78 days to fill is covered through some combination of overtime, float-pool utilization, and agency or travel nurses. NSI 2026 data records travel RN rates as high as $160 per hour, and estimates that replacing 20 travel nurses with employed staff saves $1.32 million (NSI 2026 / Kahuna Workforce, 2026).

The financial structure here is worth stating plainly: a vacancy does not save money. It generates a different, typically higher cost in the form of premium labor — and it does so quietly, distributed across pay periods, until it surfaces in a quarterly labor-cost review.

For a structured approach to projecting how your current vacancy profile will affect staffing costs over the next two quarters, our six-month vacancy forecasting guide walks through the methodology in detail. You can also apply it directly using our Nursing Vacancy & FTE Forecasting Workbook, a structured Excel template built around the NSI and BLS inputs covered in this article.

HRSA Projections: The Long View on RN Supply and Demand

Turnover and vacancy statistics describe today. HRSA workforce projections describe the structural trajectory — the supply-demand relationship that shapes whether today's 8.6% vacancy rate improves or worsens over the planning horizon that matters for capital and hiring decisions.

HRSA's 2022 projections estimated a national shortage of 78,610 FTE RNs in 2025, declining to 63,720 FTE by 2030 as new graduates enter the workforce (HRSA Nursing Workforce Projections Factsheet, November 2022). The 2030 figure is the one most commonly cited in strategic planning contexts and, notably, it describes moderation — not resolution. A shortage of 63,720 FTE nationally represents a structurally tight labor market for experienced RNs for the remainder of this decade.

HRSA's more recent analysis offers additional texture. A 2024 update to the projections estimates an 8% RN shortage by 2028, narrowing to approximately 3% — roughly 108,960 FTE — by 2038, with a disproportionately acute 11% shortage projected in nonmetropolitan areas in 2038 (HRSA Nurse Workforce Projections 2023–2038 Factsheet, 2024). The rural and nonmetro concentration matters for facilities in those markets: the national trajectory toward moderation may not apply to their local labor pool on the same timeline.

On the supply side, the picture is more constructive than the shortage numbers alone imply. A peer-reviewed analysis published via JAMA found that total FTE RNs rebounded to 3.35 million in 2022–23, approximately 6% above 2019's pre-pandemic level of 3.16 million, with projections suggesting the workforce could reach approximately 4.56 million FTE RNs by 2035 (Auerbach et al., via PMC/HealthExec, 2024). BLS independently projects RN employment to grow 5% from 2024 to 2034, generating approximately 189,100 annual job openings against a current base of 3.4 million RN jobs (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, RN, 2024–2034 projection).

The reconciliation between the shortage framing and the supply-growth framing is this: demand is growing faster than supply in aggregate, and the distribution of both is uneven geographically. A facility with strong regional recruiting channels and competitive wages may experience the favorable supply trajectory. A rural SNF or a community hospital in a region with limited nursing-school pipeline may experience the shortage trajectory more acutely.

A note on the retirement horizon. NCSBN's 2022 National Nursing Workforce Study found that 610,388 RNs — nearly one in five — intended to leave the profession by 2027, including approximately 200,000 under the age of 40 (NCSBN 2022 National Nursing Workforce Study, 2023). This is the structural supply constraint that the graduation pipeline must outpace. For a detailed analysis of how the retirement and early-exit cohort affects mid-size facility planning, see our retirement cliff and nursing workforce piece.

Nursing Shortage Statistics in SNF and LTC Settings

Hospital-focused statistics dominate most workforce coverage, but the shortage has a distinct profile in skilled nursing, long-term care, and home health settings — and it is, by most measures, more acute.

AHCA's 2024 State of the Sector Report, drawing on a survey of 441 nursing homes, found that 94% of nursing homes report difficulty recruiting, and 90% had raised wages in the prior six months in response (AHCA 2024 State of the Sector Report, March 2024). Despite those wage increases, 72% of nursing homes remain below pre-pandemic staffing levels (AHCA 2024). By 2024, 46% of SNFs were limiting admissions and 20% had closed entire units as a direct consequence of staffing shortfalls (PMC, 2026).

Workforce costs in SNF settings are compounded by high CNA and LPN turnover. The average CNA turnover rate stands at 44.2%, with CNAs, LPNs, and RNs all named among the hardest roles to recruit and retain (Ziegler CFO Hotline survey, via Skilled Nursing News, July 2025). For LPN/LVNs specifically, BLS records a national median annual wage of $62,340 (May 2024), with a 10th-percentile floor below $47,960 and a 90th-percentile ceiling above $80,510 (BLS OOH, LPN/LVN, May 2024). In facilities where internal pay bands have not kept pace with that range, pay-band compression contributes directly to the recruitment difficulty AHCA documents.

CMS's April 2024 final minimum staffing rule set requirements including 0.55 RN HPRD and 3.48 total nursing HPRD for long-term care facilities — figures that remain a useful reference for the scale of the SNF staffing gap. As of May 2024, only 50% of nursing homes met the 0.55 RN HPRD minimum, and only 59% met the 3.48 total HPRD minimum (HHS ASPE, May 2024). Note: these federal HPRD minimums are no longer in force. A CMS interim final rule published December 3, 2025 rescinded the minimum HPRD staffing requirements, aligning the regulations with a Congressional moratorium (Public Law 119-21, §71111) that bars CMS from enforcing them through September 30, 2034. The longstanding requirement to use an RN on-site at least 8 consecutive hours a day and designate an RN director of nursing remains in effect. Treat the HPRD figures here as a historical planning baseline, not a current mandate, and consult CMS for current obligations.

Wage Benchmarks: Where the Shortage Meets the Pay Band

The nursing shortage is, in part, a wage story. A facility paying below the regional median for RNs is not simply less attractive to candidates — it is generating ongoing retention pressure among its existing staff, many of whom monitor market rates actively.

The BLS May 2024 national median annual wage for RNs is $93,600, with a 10th-percentile floor below $66,030 and a 90th-percentile ceiling above $135,320 (BLS OOH, Registered Nurses, May 2024). These figures represent national medians; state-level and metropolitan-area distributions vary considerably. California, as the highest-paying state, records an annual mean RN wage of approximately $148,330 (BLS OEWS May 2024, via Sunbelt Staffing analysis, May 2024). Healthcare practitioners and technical workers overall earn a median of $83,090 annually against an all-occupations median of $49,500 (BLS OOH, Healthcare Occupations, May 2024) — context that illustrates the wage premium RNs command relative to the broader labor market, and why a pay-band gap is difficult to obscure for long.

Wage benchmarking without a structured methodology can mislead. A facility comparing its median RN wage to a national figure may miss a meaningful gap relative to its local competitors — or may be paying above the regional median for one unit type and significantly below it for another. The relevant comparison is state-level at minimum and metro-level where data permit. BLS OES publishes this data annually by SOC code; the practical challenge for most mid-size facilities is building the join between their internal pay-band data and the current BLS release in a way that surfaces actionable gaps rather than aggregate averages.

For a full treatment of how to approach wage benchmarking as a retention tool, see our nurse turnover resource hub and the cost of nurse turnover analysis.

Turning Nursing Shortage Statistics into a Facility-Level Planning Foundation

National nursing shortage statistics are the context. Your facility's own numbers are the plan.

83% of CNOs cite recruitment and retention as a top success metric (Wolters Kluwer / Lippincott FutureCare Nursing 2026 report, 2026) — which means most nursing leaders are already tracking the outcome. The gap is typically at the measurement layer: a spreadsheet that captures headcount and resignation dates but does not surface the rolling 12-month turnover rate by unit, does not flag pay bands that have drifted below the regional BLS median, and does not model how the current vacancy rate will translate into six-month staffing costs if time-to-fill holds at 78 days.

The statistics in this article give you the benchmarks. Applying them to your specific context requires connecting three data streams that most mid-size facilities currently manage in separate places: headcount and FTE data, internal pay-band records, and external BLS wage benchmarks. When those three are joined, a wage-gap flag is no longer an intuition — it is a number, sourced, dated, and comparable against the same methodology next quarter.

A worked example using NSI and BLS inputs. A 200-bed hospital with 150 staff RNs, a 17.6% turnover rate (the 2025 NSI national average), and a $60,090 per-departure cost (NSI 2026) faces a modeled annualized turnover cost of approximately $1.58 million. If that facility's BLS state-level median RN wage shows its median pay band sitting below the regional median by a meaningful margin, wage-gap pressure is contributing to that cost — and the NSI research on the relationship between competitive compensation and retention gives a quantified case for a targeted pay-band adjustment before the next departure. These are modeled figures; verify them against your facility's own labor cost data and consult your HR and finance teams before presenting them as measured results.

What to Do With These Numbers

The nursing shortage statistics 2026 data points to a labor market that is tighter than pre-pandemic norms, moderating slowly, and unevenly distributed by geography, facility type, and unit. For a CNO at a mid-size facility, the practical response is not a reaction to national headlines — it is a structured, quarterly look at your own facility's rolling turnover rate, vacancy depth, time-to-fill trend, and pay-band position relative to BLS benchmarks.

If you are starting that process now, the Nursing Vacancy & FTE Forecasting Workbook is a structured Excel template that applies the NSI and BLS inputs covered in this article to your own headcount data — giving you a six-month vacancy and FTE forecast built on the same methodology as the figures above, without requiring a new software implementation. It is designed for the CNO or Director of Nursing who is ready to move beyond a reactive spreadsheet and wants a structured model before deciding on a longer-term analytics approach.

For context on the full analytics layer — rolling turnover by unit, BLS wage benchmarking, retention risk scoring, and six-month forecasting in a persistent dashboard — the nursing workforce analytics guide explains how those components work together.

The shortage is real. The data is available. The next step is making it specific to your facility.