Nursing Can Pay Nearly $100K, But Nurses Are Still Quitting

Image source: Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash

On paper, it’s a great time to be a nurse. In real life, it’s a different story.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that RN jobs will grow 6% between 2025 and 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, with an employment change of 194,700 over the decade. The median RN salary was $97,550 in May 2025.

But demand is only half of the story. As The Wall Street Journal just reported, nurses are walking away from the bedside, even for well-paying jobs that seem rarer than ever in this economy.

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The 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report has the national hospital RN turnover rate at 17.6%, a number that has increased since the previous year. The RN vacancy rate is 8.6%, which works out to about 43 unfilled RN positions at the average hospital.

The National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) surveyed nurses across 53 jurisdictions for its 2024 National Nursing Workforce Study, released in April 2025. It found that 39.9% of RNs and 41.3% of LPN/VNs plan to leave or retire within five years.

NCSBN also estimates that more than 138,000 nurses have left the workforce since 2022, citing stress, burnout, and retirement. Among nurses who plan to leave for reasons other than retirement, about 41.5% point to stress and burnout, followed by workload, understaffing, inadequate pay, and workplace violence.

The Wall Street Journal article cited workplace violence as a leading reason Paige Campbell, the nurse highlighted in the story, moved out of her ER role. Despite purposefully becoming a nurse during the pandemic to help people, Campbell suffered strangulation at the hands of a patient and left the emergency department for a role remotely monitoring patients while she regrouped. Campbell works at an HCA Healthcare hospital; according to Nurse.org’s analysis of hospital executive pay, HCA’s CEO received $26.5 million in 2025, 420 times the company’s median employee pay. 

Her crime, per the WSJ? Offering her patient a blanket.

New hires are especially likely to go. NSI found that first-year RN turnover is 22.7% of new RN hires, and those first-year departures make up 29% of all RN separations. Across all hospital employees, close to 30% of new hires left within a year.

The type of nursing position also plays a major part in turnover. Women’s health, pediatrics, and surgical services nurses tend to stay in their jobs. But on the other hand, nurses in the following roles have very high turnover rates:

• Behavioral health (22.5%)
• Emergency (20.7%)
• Telemetry (19.5%)
• Step down (19%) 

Retirement is also becoming a bigger factor. NSI lists personal reasons, relocation, retirement, career advancement, and scheduling conflicts as the top reasons RNs resign, and retirement is the third most common and rising.

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Aside from the obvious impact on direct patient care, as well as the elephant in the room of how nurses’ physical, mental, and emotional health might be impacted by leaving the career, there is the financial blow of nurse turnover to be considered:

• $60,090 = the average cost of just one RN turnover at a hospital
• $295,000 = the cost of each percentage point change in RN turnover costs the average hospital per year
• $4.2-6.2 million = the overall cost to the average hospital of RN turnover

Honestly, we wish we had an answer for this. Recent nurse strike activity has been high, as nurses have fought for basics like safe staffing ratios, workplace violence protections, benefits and retirement, and even against AI.

It is no secret that hospitals need nurses and that there are plenty of Registered Nurses in the country. The problem seems to be getting those hospitals to hire and retain nurses who are willing to work in the conditions they are currently providing.

One article also described the vicious circle that fewer nurses can cause: fewer nurses = fewer available beds in ERs = even more strained working conditions = more reasons for nurses to leave.

There may not be an easy solution, and frankly, it should not all be on the shoulders of nurses to figure out. But if hospitals need nurses but nurses are not staying at hospitals, despite the potential for high pay, I think we can all agree that not only is there something deeply wrong, but that it is in everyone’s best interest to find a solution that works for everyone.

🤔 Nurses: Are you thinking about leaving your current job or the profession? Tell us what would make you stay.