Registered Nurse is the most commonly advertised job title in the U.S., a distinction the profession has held on and off (but never out of the top 10) for years.
According to Wanted Analytics, there were 350,000 nurse positions advertised online in October, a 15% increase over a year ago. The research firm rates the difficulty of filling a registered nurse position at 39 on its 100 point scale.
But don’t be fooled by that relatively modest hiring difficulty ranking. The company rates hiring difficulty based on the number of available jobs versus the number of qualified individuals in the country, meaning the total number of licensed RNs. Wanted puts that number at 2.663 million.
However, as any healthcare recruiter will tell you, if you’re trying to fill a specialty position, the difficulty can rise dramatically. It also depends on where the job is, and what it pays. The median salary for an RN is $72,450 nationally. However, in some parts of the country, salaries can be $10,000 or even $20,000 higher for experienced nurses.
And where the job is also figures in to the difficulty. Wanted says Medford, Oregon scores 77 on its hiring difficulty scale, the highest in the country. That was in October. At the rate of growth of demand across the country (see chart), some other community may have already displaced Medford.