A hospital loses $60,090 every time a bedside RN walks out the door. That's not a worst-case estimate — it's the average, and in 2025 it happened often enough to cost the typical hospital between $4.2 million and $6.2 million.

For a while, the trend was actually moving in the right direction. RN turnover eased down from its pandemic-era peak through 2024. Then it reversed. Turnover climbed back up in 2025, and roughly 4 in 10 nurses are still telling researchers they plan to leave the profession within five years.

The 31 numbers below break down what's actually happening: where turnover is worst, what it's costing hospitals, why nurses say they're leaving, and what the data says works to keep them. Every stat links to its original, named source, so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it.

Overall Turnover and Vacancy

  1. National RN turnover rate is 17.6% (2025), up 1.2 percentage points from 16.4% in 2024. This is the first year-over-year increase since the pandemic-era peak, meaning the gradual recovery hospitals had been counting on has stalled. (2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report)
  2. Hospital-wide turnover across all roles sits at 18.5%. This figure includes support staff and non-nursing clinical roles, which is why it runs slightly higher than the RN-only rate — a useful reminder that RN turnover alone understates total workforce churn. (2026 NSI Report)
  3. Individual hospital RN turnover ranges from 5.6% to 40.0%. The spread is driven largely by bed count and acuity, which means comparing your facility against the national average alone can be misleading — benchmark against similarly sized peers instead. (Becker's Hospital Review, "The cost of nurse turnover in 10 points | 2026")
  4. The RN vacancy rate improved to 8.6%, down from 9.6% the year before. NSI changed its calculation methodology this year, so treat the year-over-year comparison as directional rather than exact. (2026 NSI Report)
  5. The average hospital has 43 RN FTEs sitting unfilled, and 33.1% of hospitals report a vacancy rate of 10% or higher. A lower national vacancy average can still hide a third of hospitals running dangerously short-staffed. (2026 NSI Report)
  6. Average time to recruit an experienced RN runs 56 to 102 days, with a Recruitment Difficulty Index of 78 days overall. Even hospitals with budget approved to backfill a role are waiting close to three months to fill it, a gap typically absorbed through overtime and agency staffing. (2026 NSI Report)
  7. In 2025, 324,090 acute care RNs exited their positions while hospitals hired 377,650 RNs, a 2.9% net add rate — down sharply from 5.6% the prior year. Hospitals are still hiring more nurses than they're losing on paper, but the pace of net gains slowed by roughly half, meaning the safety margin between hiring and attrition is shrinking. (Becker's Hospital Review, 2026)

First-Year and Specialty Turnover

  1. First-year RN turnover is 22.3%, and first-year departures account for 29.0% of all RN turnover. Nearly a third of every hospital's total turnover comes from nurses who haven't hit their one-year mark, making early-career retention the single highest-leverage fix available. (2026 NSI Report)
  2. Roughly 1 in 5 RNs left their organization between 2022 and 2023; among RNs in their first two years, that rose to roughly 1 in 4. A second, independent data source confirming the same pattern as #8 — early tenure is consistently where turnover concentrates. (Press Ganey, "The state of nursing turnover and key nurse retention strategies")
  3. Behavioral health has the highest specialty turnover at 22.5%, followed by emergency care at 20.7%, telemetry at 19.5%, and step-down units at 19%. All four run above the national RN average. Note: Becker's issued a correction on this exact figure after an earlier version of their article mistakenly published 2024 percentages labeled as 2025 — a good reminder to check the publish/update date on any secondary source before citing it. (Becker's Hospital Review, corrected April 22, 2026)
  4. Over a five-year window, telemetry, step-down, and emergency units posted cumulative RN turnover of 117.8%, 115.4%, and 113.6% respectively. In practical terms, those departments turn over their entire RN staff in under four and a half years — a framing that lands harder with unit leaders than an annual percentage does. (2026 NSI Report, via Becker's)
  5. Surgical services and pediatrics were the most stable specialties over the same five years, at 78.8% and 75.6% cumulative turnover. The gap between the most and least mobile specialties is enormous — a nurse in telemetry is statistically far more likely to have left within five years than one in pediatrics. (2026 NSI Report, via Becker's)
  6. Turnover by care setting ranges from 17.6% in specialty practices to 32.1% in long-term care. Organizations running both acute and long-term care sites are managing two very different retention problems under one umbrella, and need separate strategies for each. (2026 NSI Report)
  7. Patient care technicians turn over at 33.8% and certified nursing assistants at 32.5%. Both are well above RN averages, which means support-role retention deserves its own budget and strategy rather than being folded into nurse-focused initiatives. (2026 NSI Report)
  8. CNA turnover improved by 3.6 points year-over-year, the sharpest gain of any role tracked. It's the one clearly positive trend in an otherwise worsening dataset, worth studying for what specifically drove the improvement. (2026 NSI Report)

Regional Trends

  1. The South-East posted the highest 2025 RN turnover at 18.7%; the North-Central posted the lowest at 16.2%. A 2.5-point regional gap this size means a single national retention playbook will be miscalibrated for at least one end of that range. (2026 NSI Report, via Becker's)
  2. Every region except the South-Central saw turnover rise in 2025, with the North-East recording the sharpest jump at 3.3 points. The South-Central's decline stands out as the exception worth understanding, since it ran counter to the national trend. (2026 NSI Report, via Becker's)

Financial Impact

  1. Replacing one bedside RN costs an average of $60,090. This figure covers recruitment, hiring, and onboarding specifically — it doesn't include the overtime or agency costs incurred while the position sits vacant, which push the real cost higher. (2026 NSI Report)
  2. The average hospital loses $4.2 million to $6.2 million annually to RN turnover, averaging $5.19 million. For a mid-sized facility, that's frequently a larger line item than the entire recruiting marketing budget, which is worth pointing out when building an internal business case for retention spend. (2026 NSI Report)
  3. Each single percentage point change in turnover costs or saves the average hospital roughly $295,000 per year. This is the most useful number in the whole dataset for justifying engagement or retention spend — a plausible 2-point improvement is worth close to $590,000 annually. (2026 NSI Report, via Becker's)
  4. The 1.2-point rise in turnover from 2024 to 2025 cost the average hospital an additional $360,000. That's the direct, calculable price of last year's reversal, not a hypothetical — it already happened. (2026 NSI Report, via Becker's)

Workforce Supply and Demand

  1. There were 5,641,311 RNs and 968,948 LPNs/LVNs in the U.S. at the start of 2024, with a median age of 50 for both groups. A median age this high signals a wave of retirements still ahead, on top of the voluntary turnover already straining staffing. (Journal of Nursing Regulation, "The 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey")
  2. RN employment is projected to grow 5% between 2024 and 2034, with about 189,100 RN job openings projected annually. Most of that annual opening figure comes from replacing nurses who retire or leave, not from net new demand — meaning the shortage is substantially a retention problem, not just a growth problem. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook — Registered Nurses)
  3. Nurse practitioner, nurse anesthetist, and nurse midwife roles are projected to grow 35% over the same period. Advanced practice roles are growing far faster than bedside RN roles, which will intensify competition for experienced nurses considering a move up rather than out. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Nurse Anesthetists, Nurse Midwives, and Nurse Practitioners)
  4. LPN/LVN employment is projected to grow a more modest 3%, with about 54,400 annual openings. Slower growth here suggests LPN staffing pressure will look different from RN pressure — worth modeling separately in workforce planning. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses)

Burnout and Intent to Leave

  1. Roughly 40% of RNs (39.9%) and LPN/VNs (41.3%) report an intent to leave the workforce or retire within five years. This is a forward-looking figure, not a historical one — it's effectively a five-year risk list, and treating it as distant rather than urgent is a common and costly mistake. (NCSBN, "NCSBN Launches 2026 Nursing Workforce Survey")
  2. Among nurses citing reasons besides retirement, roughly 41.5% selected stress and burnout as the root cause, with workload, understaffing, and inadequate salary close behind. This confirms burnout as the dominant, addressable driver rather than one factor among many equally weighted causes. (NCSBN, 2026 Survey Launch announcement)
  3. Employment levels have rebounded, with 87.7% of RN licensees and 70.6% of LPN/VN licensees now actively employed in nursing, workloads down 20-25% since 2022, and median pay up 10-16%. The workforce has genuinely stabilized since the pandemic-era exodus — it just hasn't stabilized enough to bring intent-to-leave numbers down to a healthy range. (NCSBN, "Research Highlights Small Steps Toward Nursing Workforce Recovery")
  4. More than 138,000 nurses have left the workforce since 2022. This is a running total, not a single-year figure, and it's the clearest evidence that the post-pandemic nursing exodus never fully reversed, it only slowed. (NCSBN Workforce Data)

Engagement's Link to Turnover

  1. Disengaged RNs are 2.2 times more likely to turn over than highly engaged ones, and facilities with the highest engagement scores report turnover rates 5.6 percentage points lower than the lowest-scoring facilities. This is the strongest evidence in the dataset that engagement isn't a soft metric sitting next to turnover — it's a direct, measurable predictor of it, with a gap large enough to show up in the financial numbers above. (Press Ganey, "The state of nursing turnover and key nurse retention strategies")
  2. Gen Z RNs had the highest turnover of any generational cohort in 2024, at 24%, compared to 17% among nurses overall — a gap that reflects different expectations around purpose, growth, and support rather than pay alone. (Press Ganey, "Nurse Experience 2025")

Bonus stat: RNs with a negative view of teamwork and available resources are 1.53 times more likely to leave, and pride in an organization's mission and care quality was the single strongest predictor of retention in the same dataset. (Press Ganey, "Nurse Experience 2025")

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the average nurse turnover rate?

‍The national RN turnover rate is 17.6% as of 2025, per the NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, up from 16.4% the year before. Hospital-wide turnover across all roles sits slightly higher, at 18.5%.

2. Why is nurse turnover increasing again?

‍After a few years of gradual improvement post-pandemic, turnover rose 1.2 percentage points in 2025. Burnout, understaffing, and inadequate compensation remain the top reasons nurses cite for leaving, and engagement scores have started slipping again after modest gains.

3. Which nursing specialties have the highest turnover?

‍Behavioral health leads at 22.5%, followed by emergency care at 20.7%, telemetry at 19.5%, and step-down units at 19%. Long-term care facilities as a setting run even higher, up to 32.1%.

4. How much does nurse turnover cost hospitals?

‍Replacing one bedside RN costs an average of $60,090. For a typical hospital, that adds up to $4.2 million to $6.2 million a year, or roughly $295,000 for every single percentage point of turnover.

5. What causes nurses to leave their jobs?

‍Stress and burnout top the list, cited by about 41.5% of nurses planning to leave for reasons other than retirement. Workload, understaffing, and inadequate salary follow closely behind, along with weak teamwork and feeling unheard by leadership.

6. Is nurse turnover getting worse or better?

‍Both, depending on the timeframe. Turnover improved gradually from 2022 through 2024, but ticked back up in 2025. Nearly 40% of nurses still report an intent to leave or retire within five years, suggesting the underlying pressure hasn't gone away even during the improved years.

7. What percentage of nurses leave within their first year?

‍First-year RN turnover sits at 22.3%, and first-year departures account for close to 29% of all RN turnover at the average hospital, making early-career retention the single biggest lever available.

8. How can hospitals reduce nurse turnover?

‍The most consistent strategies include structured onboarding through the first year, regular stay interviews rather than only exit interviews, continuous engagement listening tied to visible action, staffing ratio and workload reviews, and recognition built into daily workflow rather than annual events.

9. What is considered a healthy nurse turnover rate?

‍There's no single healthy benchmark, since rates vary enormously by specialty and setting, from around 5.6% to over 40% across hospitals. Most organizations benchmark against facilities of similar size, acuity, and region rather than the national average alone.

10. Does nurse engagement actually reduce turnover?

‍Yes, and the relationship is measurable. Disengaged RNs are 2.2 times more likely to leave than highly engaged ones, and facilities with the highest engagement scores report turnover rates 5.6 percentage points lower than facilities with the lowest scores.

11. Is the nursing shortage expected to continue?

‍Demand isn't slowing down. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 189,100 RN job openings every year through 2034, driven both by growth in demand and by the need to replace nurses who retire or leave the field.

12. Which generation of nurses has the highest turnover?

‍Gen Z RNs had the highest turnover of any cohort in the most recent data, at 24%, reflecting different expectations around purpose, growth, and support compared to older generations.

Sources

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