Nurses Leaving, Applicants Turned Away: What NCSBN and AACN Data Show About the Nursing Pipeline
By NurseCompensation Research Team · 2026-10-05 · 7 min read
More than 138,000 nurses have left the workforce since 2022, and about 40% of those remaining say they plan to leave within five years. Meanwhile, nursing schools turned away 80,162 qualified applications in 2024. Here is what the primary data says.
Two sets of numbers explain a lot about nurse pay right now. One measures how many nurses are leaving. The other measures how many people want to become nurses but can't get a seat in school.
Both come from organizations that collect the data directly: the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), which licenses nurses, and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), which surveys nursing schools every year.
Who has left
NCSBN runs the National Nursing Workforce Study with the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers. Its last two rounds:
| Study | Finding |
|---|---|
| 2022 study | About 100,000 RNs left the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic |
| 2022 study | 610,388 RNs reported an intent to leave by 2027 |
| 2022 study | 188,962 of those planning to leave were under age 40 |
| 2024 study | More than 138,000 nurses have left the workforce since 2022 |
The under-40 figure is the one that stands out. Retirements are expected and can be planned for. Nurses leaving early in their careers are not.
Who is planning to leave
The 2024 study, released in April 2025, asked nurses about their plans for the next five years.
| License type | Intend to leave or retire within 5 years |
|---|---|
| Registered nurses | 39.9% |
| LPNs / LVNs | 41.3% |
NCSBN describes this as potentially 1.6 million nurses. Among those planning to leave, 41.5% cited stress or burnout.
Intent is not the same as action. The survey measures what nurses say they plan to do, not what they will do, and some who plan to leave a job may move to another nursing role instead. Still, the direction matters: a large share of licensed nurses are signaling they are near the door.
How many licensed nurses are actually working in nursing
| License type | Currently working in nursing |
|---|---|
| Registered nurses | 87.7% |
| LPNs / LVNs | 70.6% |
The LPN figure means close to 3 in 10 people holding an active practical nursing license are not working in nursing. That is a sizable pool of qualified people the profession is not keeping.
The 2024 study also found that more than 73% of RNs hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and NCSBN reported median pay increases of roughly 10% to 16% since the prior study.
The other side: people who want in
If nurses are leaving, the obvious fix is to train more. Demand from students is not the problem.
AACN's annual survey of nursing schools:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Entry-level BSN enrollment, 2024 | 267,889 (up 4.9% from 2023) |
| Entry-level BSN enrollment, 2025 | 283,303 (up 7.6%) |
| Qualified applications turned away, 2024 | 80,162 |
| ...from baccalaureate programs | 65,398 |
| ...from graduate programs | 13,234 |
A note on reading these: AACN calculates year-over-year changes using only schools that reported in both years, so the percentage changes will not match the raw difference between the two totals. That is by design.
Also, "applications" is not the same as people. One student may apply to several schools and be turned away from more than one. So 80,162 does not mean 80,162 individuals were shut out. It does mean schools rejected that many applications from candidates who met admission requirements.
Why schools turn qualified applicants away
AACN asks schools directly. The reasons they give, year after year:
- Not enough clinical placement sites
- Not enough faculty
- Not enough preceptors
- Not enough classroom space
- Budget limits
Clinical sites and preceptors depend on hospitals that are themselves short-staffed. Faculty shortages tie back to pay.
The faculty pay problem in one table
| Occupation (BLS May 2025) | Median annual pay | Employed |
|---|---|---|
| Registered nurses | $97,550 | 3,379,720 |
| Nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary | $80,250 | 77,960 |
The median nursing instructor earns $17,300 less than the median RN, even though teaching faculty typically need a graduate degree. For an experienced RN, moving into teaching usually means a pay cut, and schools compete with hospitals for the same people. The 90th percentile for nursing instructors is $129,500, compared with $137,470 for RNs.
What this means for your pay
Put these numbers together and you get a labor market where:
- A significant share of current nurses say they plan to leave within five years.
- Schools are growing enrollment but still rejecting tens of thousands of qualified applications.
- The bottleneck is capacity (faculty, clinical sites, preceptors), not interest.
That combination supports nurse wages. NCSBN's own data shows median pay rising since 2022. For individual nurses, the practical point is that employers have a strong financial reason to keep experienced staff, which gives you leverage when you negotiate a raise, a schedule, or a retention bonus.
Sources: National Council of State Boards of Nursing, National Nursing Workforce Study (2022 results and 2024 results, released April 2025); American Association of Colleges of Nursing, annual Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing survey (2024 and 2025 data); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (SOC 29-1141, 25-1072). Pay gap calculated by NurseCompensation from published BLS figures.