Nursing Demand Hits New High as Turnover and Shortages Reshape the Workforce

Monster has released its 2025 Healthcare Market Report, revealing which roles employers are searching for most and how hiring trends are shifting as the industry moves into 2026. Drawing on millions of job ads and candidate searches from this year, the report shows a healthcare workforce in high demand. For the nursing workforce, from CNAs and LPNs to RNs and NPs, the overall outlook is remarkably strong.

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.” 

If you’re looking for a job (or a change of setting), that’s encouraging news. Monster found that among candidate searches, RN, LPN, and NP positions are the top searches — showing demand and interest are aligned. 

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.

What It Means for You: Opportunities and Strategy

If you’re an RN, LPN, CNA or NP — or considering one of those paths — here’s what to take away:

• Strong bargaining leverage: When demand outpaces supply, there may be better opportunities for negotiating pay, shift flexibility, or roles (e.g. travel, part-time, outpatient).
• Flexibility to choose care settings: With demand in outpatient clinics, long-term care, rehab, and non-hospital settings, you may have more freedom to choose what kind of environment fits your lifestyle or career goals.
• Great time for career advancement: NP roles are among the fastest growing. If you’ve thought about moving into advanced practice, the hiring environment couldn’t be more favorable.
• Supportive, growing allied-care ecosystem: With more therapists, technicians, and support staff being hired rapidly, team-based care is growing — which could ease workload and allow for more comprehensive care models.

A Few Words of Caution

The report itself notes that its findings reflect activity within Monster’s ecosystem, not the entire U.S. labor market. 

That means that while the trends are encouraging, they may not always reflect regional realities. Also, just because job postings are up doesn’t guarantee staffing levels improve; high turnover, burnout, and retention challenges continue to affect the healthcare workforce.

Indeed, broader data suggest the U.S. continues to face a nursing shortage, driven by retirements, rising demand among aging populations, and attrition. Furthermore, the potential reclassification of nursing as a professional degree could further intensify pressure on the pipeline, influencing enrollment capacity, program accessibility, and the speed at which new APRNs enter the workforce.

Bottom Line

For nurses — from CNAs to NPs — the 2025 Healthcare Market Report signals opportunity. Demand remains high across many specialties and settings, and advanced-practice and long-term care roles are especially buoyant. 

Whether you’re job-seeking, looking for a change in setting, or considering advancing your career, this moment likely represents one of the better times in recent years to make a move.

 

🤔 Nurses: do these trends surprise you? Let us know in the discussion forum below.