New NCSBN Data Indicates Why Nurses Are Leaving the Workforce

There are five major reasons why nurses are departing from the workforce, according to this new study.

As CNOs deal with nursing shortages, it's critical to understand why they are happening.

The National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) recently published the latest 2024 National Nursing Workforce Study which surveyed 800,000 nurses about the state of the nursing workforce. According to the study, 40% of participants indicated their intention to leave the workforce in the next five years. The study also reported that 138,000 nurses have left the workforce since 2022.

So why is this happening? Let's take a look.

Why nurses are leaving

There are five main reasons that nurses are leaving, according to the data: stress and burnout, workload, understaffing, inadequate salary, and workplace violence. According to Phil Dickison, CEO of NCSBN, solving these issues will take thinking differently.

"Every one of those numbers is a voice, it is not simply a number on a page," Dickison said in regard to the survey participants. "My argument is that [as leaders] we need to be better about…listening to these voices of the nurses before we invoke solutions."

Dickison stated that more data is necessary to determine which nurses are having certain experiences and which ones are having others. For instance, the stress that an ICU nurse faces might be completely different than what a NICU or med surg nurse might experience.

"We need to find this out because we're doing correlations now, but maybe there's better correlations that stress is higher in those areas," Dickison said. "Intuitively…we might believe that, but is it true? And if it is true, then what are the causes of stress in that area?"

Positive outlooks for the industry

Despite what the study suggests about nurses leaving, there are also some positive trends that can be drawn from the data. According to Dickison, one of the positive results has to do with the number of nurses currently in the workforce. The data show that 88% of RNs and 71% of LPN/VNs are actively involved in nursing, which is a sign that employment levels have rebounded since the height of the pandemic.

"We've started to see a rebound in the size or the number of individuals in the workforce," Dickison said. "We started to see that grow in the right direction."

The study also shows that the median age of the nurse workforce went up as experienced nurses begin to return to the workforce. Additionally, 73% of participants hold a baccalaureate degree or higher, which is the highest educational level for nurses that NCSBN has ever documented. The number of Hispanic and Latino nurses has doubled to 7.2% since 2015, and nurses are experiencing a 10-16% increase in median pre-tax income.

A call to action

Dickinson cautions that though these numbers are good, the question remains about whether the workforce is sustainable. While the survey does show moderation for some of these issues, it's critical that the focus remains on solving them.

"I have this fear that because we're showing moderated stress and burnout data that it will somehow become a backburner issue," Dickison said. "Let's not let that happen, because the fact that we moderated it is a good thing, but it is not solved."

Dickison believes CNOs need to continue prioritizing stress, burnout, salary, and workplace violence even though they might be moderated for the time being.

"We need to prioritize that as a moment in time now to go forward and not just talk about solutions, but seek and implement solutions," Dickinson said.

Dickinson also emphasized that these are multifaceted problems, and CNOs alone will not be able to solve these problems.

"What I would argue [for] at this point is somewhat of a call to action within NCSBN and [to] all of our partners, our clinical partners, our practice partners, our education partners, and our policy partners," Dickison said, "because I think this is not a single solution set."