Stop Saying There's a Nursing Shortage

Turn on the television or flip through a newspaper, and you might think that the U.S. desperately needs to train more nurses.Arizona has nearly 30,000 nursing vacancies, local TV stations there recently reported; Pennsylvania Republicans met in early June to discuss how to fill the state’s nursing shortage, two schools are even opening new nursing programs in Georgia to meet that state’s projected nursing shortage. “The Nursing Shortage Starts in the Classroom,” a recent Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed. Yet more people are going into nursing; 280,308 people passed the NCLEX examination to become a registered nurse (RN) or licensed practical nurse (LPN) in 2025, a 34% increase from 2016, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. And currently 7 million registered nurses and practical nurses hold an active license in at least one state, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. But there were only about 3.4 million jobs for registered nurses in 2024, the most recent year for which data are available, and 651,400 jobs for licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses in that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—meaning t...