Louisiana’s Nursing Crisis: RN Turnover Hits 38% as Vacancies Rise

This article is part of Nurse.org’s Nursing Workforce Benchmark, a new research series analyzing nursing workforce strain across all 50 states. This article takes a closer look at Louisiana, ranked #5, which has the most fully documented convergence of vacancy and turnover data of any state in the dataset.

Vacancy rates measure how many nursing positions are unfilled today. Turnover rates measure how fast nurses are leaving. When both are elevated at the same time, a health system isn’t just understaffed. It’s losing nurses faster than hiring can keep up.

Louisiana ranks #5 on the Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark, out of 30 ranked states. But its story is more specific than a ranking number. Of all the states in the dataset, Louisiana has the most fully documented convergence of vacancy and turnover evidence: hospital-reported data on both, from a single primary source, covering multiple care settings. That documentation is why its story is so visible. And what it shows is a system on a treadmill.

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Louisiana’s RN Vacancy and Turnover Rate: 2010 to 2022

Louisiana hospital RN vacancy more than quadrupled from 2010 to 2022, from 4% to 17.5%, with no sign of reversal through 2023.

Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark: Louisiana RN Vacancy and Turnover Over Time

Source: Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark. Louisiana Center for Nursing 2023 Nurse Employer Survey. National benchmark: NSI Nursing Solutions 2023 report (2022 data). The current national RN turnover rate is 17.6% (NSI Nursing Solutions 2026, 2025 data); both Louisiana and the national benchmark in this table reflect 2022 for direct comparison.

In 2022, the median RN turnover rate at Louisiana hospitals was 38.1%, against a national average of 22.5%. Nearly double. The Texas comparison makes this concrete: Louisiana and Texas had nearly identical vacancy rates in 2022 (17.5% vs. 17.6%), but turnover tells a different story. Louisiana’s was 38.1%. Texas’s was 28.3%. That’s a 9.8 percentage point difference between two states with the same vacancy problem.

When turnover is nearly double the national rate, as it is in Louisiana, a system isn’t just understaffed. It’s on a treadmill. Filling positions fast enough to stay even with departures requires a pace of new hiring that most hospital systems can’t sustain. And Louisiana’s new graduate data raises a harder question: they may not even be trying to hire at that pace.

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Louisiana hospitals hired 30.8% fewer newly licensed RNs in 2022 than in 2018: 610 new graduate hires vs. 882 in 2018, according to the Louisiana Center for Nursing 2023 Nurse Employer Survey. This happened during a period when vacancy rates were rising sharply. The Louisiana Center for Nursing’s data doesn’t explain why. The most likely explanations are cost (new graduates require intensive orientation in a system already stretched thin) and risk (pushing undertrained nurses onto floors is both dangerous and counterproductive). Neither explanation is encouraging.

RN Vacancy and Turnover by Care Setting in Louisiana

The shortage doesn’t distribute evenly across care settings. Hospital RNs show a median turnover rate of 38.1% in Louisiana, but the picture across care settings shows where the pressure runs even higher.

Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark: Louisiana RN Vacancy and Turnover by Care Setting (2022)

Source: Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark. Louisiana Center for Nursing 2023 Nurse Employer Survey. Federally funded clinic figures based on 9 facilities responding out of 41 surveyed (22% facility response rate); treat as directional.

Long-term care shows the highest vacancy and turnover of any setting, at 26.2% and 44.7% respectively. These are facilities that serve Louisiana’s most vulnerable patients, and they’re running with roughly one in four positions unfilled while losing nearly half their nursing staff every year.

The vacancy rate tells you there are open positions. The turnover rate tells you the positions keep reopening. Louisiana’s data shows both, which is why it paints a more complete and more alarming picture than vacancy alone would suggest.

More hiring alone isn’t changing the trajectory. The turnover rate suggests the problem is on the exit side: nurses leaving faster than replacements can arrive or stabilize.

The nurses who left Louisiana’s hospitals know what drove them out. So do the nurses who are still there. In Nurse.org’s 2026 State of Nursing Survey, 42% of nurses nationally said their unit’s staffing had gotten worse over the past year. For Louisiana nurses, that number likely understates the reality.

Read more from the Nursing Workforce Benchmark series:

🤔 If you’re a nurse in Louisiana, or another state with a similar retention problem, what’s keeping nurses from staying? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Methodology 

Louisiana figures from the Louisiana Center for Nursing 2023 Nurse Employer Survey, available at lsbn.state.la.us. The survey covers multiple care settings using FTE vacancy rate methodology. The overall survey response rate was 27% (357 of 1,328 facilities). Response rates varied by care setting; federally funded community clinic figures are based on 9 of 41 facilities surveyed (22% facility response rate) and should be treated as directional.

Texas comparison figures from the Texas Center for Nursing Workforce Studies 2022 Hospital Nurse Staffing Study (DSHS), available at dshs.texas.gov. The Texas vacancy rate cited in this article (17.6%) reflects 2022 data and is used for a direct 2022-to-2022 comparison with Louisiana. The current Texas vacancy rate (16.4%, 2024) appears in the Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark rankings table.

The national RN turnover benchmark of 22.5% is from NSI Nursing Solutions 2023 (2022 data). The current national rate is 17.6% (NSI Nursing Solutions 2026, 2025 data).

Source: Nurse.org Nursing Workforce Benchmark.

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