Nursing Roles Continue to Dominate Healthcare Hiring
According to the report’s top-10 list of most in-demand healthcare jobs, several nursing roles rank near the top:
- Registered Nurse (RN) remains the #1 role in hiring volume — including travel, ICU, medical-surgical, emergency, and labor & delivery nurses, among other specialties.
- Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurse (LPN/LVN) comes in at #4.
- Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) appears at #8 overall.
- Nurse Practitioner (NP) also made the top 10 (#9), and is called out as one of “the fastest-growing advanced-practice roles in the U.S.”
What’s Driving This Surge
- Existing High Turnover: Hospital RN turnover remains elevated even after post‑pandemic improvements.
- RNs: The 2025 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report estimates national RN turnover at about 16 percent in 2024, with more than 287,000 staff RNs leaving positions and hospitals hiring roughly 385,000 RNs to backfill and grow staffing. That churn translates into higher workloads, heavier reliance on overtime, and a sustained push to recruit experienced RNs in high‑acuity areas like ED, stepdown, and behavioral health.
- LPNs/LVNs and CNAs: Facilities effectively replace almost their entire CNA staff every three years. This creates another looming shortage that is projected to reach more than 300,000 full‑time LPN roles by the mid‑2030s if trends continue.
- Growth Beyond Hospitals: The report highlights that hiring isn’t limited to traditional hospital settings. There’s rising demand across outpatient clinics, long-term care, rehabilitation, and other settings. For LPNs and CNAs especially, these shifts mean more opportunities in non-acute care facilities.
- Expansion in Allied Care & Diagnostics Creates More Support Roles: Although nurses dominate hiring volume, growth is also accelerating rapidly in allied health and diagnostic roles — for example physical therapists, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, and lab technicians. This matters because it reflects a broader transformation in how care is delivered: more outpatient, preventive, rehabilitative, and diagnostic-focused, potentially decreasing some shifts in high-acuity inpatient settings, and increasing the need for interdisciplinary collaboration.
Source: Nurse.org
Written By: Angelina Walker
Full Article:
https://nurse.org/news/monster-2025-healthcare-report-nursing-demand