"Not a nurse shortage — a retention crisis": NNU presses staffing-ratio case with new BLS data

WASHINGTON —

National Nurses United, the country’s largest RN union, on Thursday published an updated fact sheet pressing a now-familiar argument with fresh federal numbers: there is no nurse shortage, but there is a nurse retention crisis driven by hospital working conditions.

The starting point is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2026 release, which counted roughly 1.15 million U.S. registered nurses with active licenses who were not employed as RNs as of May 2025 — about 17,661 more than a year earlier. Against 3.76 million employed RNs and 4.91 million actively licensed RNs (the licensure figure is from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing), nearly a quarter of the RN workforce holds a license but isn’t working in nursing.

First-time NCLEX-RN pass rates by U.S.-educated candidates have risen from 157,206 in 2016 to 192,915 in 2025. A February 2024 JAMA workforce analysis projected the RN workforce will add roughly 1.2 million nurses by 2035 — after replacing the wave of Boomer retirements.

NNU’s read of the same numbers: the nurses are licensed; they are leaving the bedside. A February 2026 JAMA Network analysis of RNs who had left hospital staff jobs in the prior five years found adequate staffing was the single biggest factor (65%) that would bring them back. An April 2024 study found that of nurses leaving the profession entirely, only 59% of retirements were planned — meaning roughly four in ten “retirements” were unplanned exits.

Working conditions, NNU argues, have moved backward post-pandemic, not forward. An April 2026 Medical Care study of 132 Pennsylvania hospitals (547,689 patients, 2,782 direct-care nurses) reported job dissatisfaction at 32.2% and intent to leave within the year at 27.4% — both statistically higher than pandemic-era levels. The average med-surg patient-to-nurse ratio moved from 5.7 pre-pandemic to 6.0 after.

The union’s policy ask remains the same: federal minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. California, which mandated minimums hospital-wide in 2004, has had measurably lower facility turnover than Florida, Texas, and New York for more than a decade. A March 2025 cross-sectional study in Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice — surveying more than 14,000 RNs across California, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — found California nurses report lower burnout and lower intent-to-leave than nurses in the three comparison states, an effect the authors attribute in part to ratio enforcement.

The framing matters because where the problem is named determines where the solutions get aimed. If the shortage is on the supply side, the answer is more nursing schools, more accelerated programs, more international recruitment. If the crisis is on the retention side, the answer is staffing ratios, workplace-violence protections, and union recognition. NNU is betting Congress reads the second framing more readily in 2026 than it did a decade ago.

Source: National Nurses United fact sheet (updated May 2026), citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, four JAMA Network studies (Feb 2024, April 2024, July 2024, Feb 2026), Medical Care April 2026, and Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice March 2025.