17% of Nomad Health Staff Let Go as Tech Layoffs Continue
Nomad Health, a digital marketplace for travel nursing and healthcare staffing, recently announced that it laid off 17% of its corporate workforce. CEO and Co-founder Alex Nazem confirmed that the number of employees had gone from 691 to 572. The downsizing is directly related to the decreased need for travel nurses and other temporary healthcare workers.
“Nomad, like so many other companies in the world, is confronting a major shift in the post-pandemic economy, with inflation, slowing demand, and the prospect of a recession. The healthcare staffing market is itself resetting from pandemic-fueled highs in both volume and price, and it is now decelerating at a faster rate than anticipated,” Nazem wrote to employees in an email shared to Forbes. “Nomad’s leaders, starting with me, were too optimistic about the trajectory of our market. This means, unfortunately, that we built our team for an economic reality that no longer exists.”
According to their website, New York based Nomad Health was founded in 2015, has over 500+ employees, and has placed over 250,000 clinicians at over 5,000 facilities in 50 states. The mission of the company is, “We are on a mission to remove every obstacle between providers and the patients they care for. Our focus is to digitize healthcare hiring processes and help clinicians discover rewarding opportunities hassle-free.” The company was awarded “America’s Best Startup Employers” in 2021 and 2022 by Forbes magazine and “Best Place to Work in NYC” in 2021 by Built in NYC.
The company has raised over $200 million as a tech startup including $105 million in July 2022 led by Adams Street Partners and Icon Ventures. The goal of the money raised was to expand beyond just travel nurses. The plan had been to staff other healthcare professionals including lab techs, ultrasound techs, physical therapists, etc. This market had not been tapped according to Kevin Ryan, co-founder of Nomad Health and current CEO of venture fund AlleyCorp.
Nazem, in an interview with Forbes, said that Nomad Health grew “much faster than the whole market did,” and the near term volatility that we're experiencing, does not change, the tremendous long term opportunity that's here. And we know that there's always going to be a need for temporary clinical staffing.”
While there will always be a need for travel nurses, the projections and market has declined since the massive need during the pandemic and after. According to Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), in 2023, the travel nursing industry will have a decrease of over 20% to $26.5 billion. Now, this is still a very significant need as it is down from previous years. For example, from their May and September 2022 report, the Staffing Industry Analysts projected an 18% growth in the travel nursing staffing industry. The market was projected to reach $55.1 billion or 3x the market in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At time of publication, Nomad Health only has one job opening for senior commercial counsel. Nomad Health is ranked 46th-largest travel nurse provider by SIA.
