The nursing workforce looks steadier—and 40% of RNs still plan to leave.
NCSBN’s latest update shows progress in stability, diversity, education, and salaries alongside persistent workload and retention risk.
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Nursing Mastery Editorial
Source published Jun 30, 2026 · 5 min read
The nursing workforce looks steadier—and 40% of RNs still plan to leave.
Two things can be true at once: NCSBN can report greater workforce stability, and a large share of nurses can still be considering an exit.
That is the tension in NCSBN’s latest workforce update. Its review of the 2024 National Nursing Workforce Study points to greater stability, progress in diversity and education, and salary increases. It also says short staffing and high workloads persist, while 40% of RNs and 41% of LPN/LVNs reported an intent to leave the workforce within five years.
“More stable” does not mean “problem solved”
Workforce stability is a system-level pattern. It does not tell you whether a particular unit has manageable assignments, whether experienced nurses stay, or whether a new hire will receive protected orientation.
Intent to leave is not the same measure as a completed exit. The number is still important because it describes the scale of stated plans to leave within five years.
What to look for at an employer
Use the workforce update to sharpen local questions:
How does the unit track vacancies, turnover, and use of travelers or float staff?
How often do nurses work beyond their scheduled hours?
What happens when acuity rises or staffing drops during a shift?
How many preceptors are available, and is orientation protected from routine staffing needs?
What paths exist to change schedule, unit, specialty, or workload without leaving the organization?
Do frontline nurses participate in staffing and practice decisions?
The goal is not to make a manager defend a national statistic. It is to see whether the workplace has concrete systems for the pressures the national study documents.
Watch the date on workforce claims
NCSBN says the 2026 National Nursing Workforce Study is collecting responses from April through September 2026. That means current promotional language about “the 2026 study” should not be mistaken for final 2026 results. Until the new findings are published, the detailed results discussed here come from the 2024 study as summarized in the 2026 InFocus update.
The practical takeaway
Do not reduce the report to either “nursing is recovering” or “everyone is leaving.” The useful reading is more demanding: some measures improved, while workload and retention risks remain large enough to investigate at the unit level before your next move.
