Nursing Shortage? Where?

A relative of mine recently got her RN and has been unable to find a job as a nurse. When I heard that, I was surprised because it seems all you hear about in the media and from government stats is that there is a nursing shortage and it will be only getting worse. But is there actually a shortage?

So, in my Internet research, I found allnurses.com and a link to a Forbes.com article from Nov 2009 about “recession-proof jobs” and nursing leading the pack. After reading the article, I can only ask myself -- what counts for journalistic research these days? The bar must be set quite low. I quote from the article:

"Forbes looked to the online job site Vault.com for a clear snapshot of the current job market. Vault.com developed a list of recession-proof jobs by examining all the 1.2 million jobs it aggregates through its partner site simplyhired.com and then determining the ones that were available in the greatest number.   Just as health care is the industry leading in job gains according to the BLS, the specific job at the top of Vault.com's list is registered nurse. “

Having been unemployed myself, I tend to be skeptical of job boards, because there is a lot of junk out there. My field is IT, however, so I figured it might be different for nursing. I did a little research yesterday on Wichita Falls, TX (about 125 mi NW of Dallas) and Lawrence, KS using Vault.com’s partner site simplyhired.com. Here is what I found:


Wichita Falls, TX (pop: 101,200)
I did a search yesterday on registered nurse – came up with 93 openings. That pulled up anything with the word “registered” (such as registered therapist).Refined search to “registered nurse” – 66 openings

Of those 66 openings:

 5 duplicates (did not show in listing)

 6 positions either not for a registered nurse, or were ads, or job gone

37 positions were for Nurse Options USA – see below

18 positions appeared valid. Experience required was either 2+ years, or not specified.  The positions included FT, PT and contract.

With respect to the Nurse Options USA site, the job board there links to HealthJobsUSA.com.  I searched that site for any job with “nurse” in the title (incl. LPN, LVN) and specified the 9 zip codes pertaining to Wichita Falls, TX. No jobs came up. Bottom line, a mere 27% of the 66 "openings" could be real jobs.

The case was similar for Lawrence, KS (pop: 90,500)

“registered nurse” – 43 openings

 1 duplicate

 2 Lawrence Memorial Hosp from Yahoo Hot Jobs! – RN positions no longer available, according to hospital’s own website on 4/5/2010

33 Nurse Options USA (no jobs on HealthJobsUSA.com for Lawrence zip codes)

 7 positions appeared valid. (3 required 2+ yrs exp, 2 unspecified, 2 a mere high school education for home health aide)

Found the same situation for Nurse Options USA (HealthJobsUSA.com) for Lawrence, KS zip codes.  Bottom line, a mere 21% of the 43 “openings” appeared to be real jobs.  And none appears appropriate for a new RN grad.

Good placement offices, career counselors, etc. will tell any job-seeker in any field not to put too much stock in job boards. Why then do the reporters for big-name business publications trust that numbers on a job board (worse yet, a consolidated job board that purports to show all jobs!) will give a “clear snapshot of the current job market”? Perhaps the writer was under a tight deadline, but the checking that I did on the 2 towns only took a few hours.

It concerns me, in our sound-bite world, that a quick check of positions open on one aggregated job board allegedly counts as research! And that these “facts” are then picked up and reported on by other media outlets! Meanwhile, other such critical issues as understaffing with its attendant risks to patients goes under the radar. As the daughter of a recently-retired R.N., I can only be thankful for all you RN’s out there – and that I’m in good health. (And I’ll get to the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections on labor shortages in another post!)