Nurse Burnout Statistics (2026)

Between 45% and 58% of US nurses report burnout, depending on who asked and how. The largest study, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing's 2022 workforce survey of 29,472 registered nurses, found 45.1% feeling burned out a few times a week or more. The 2024 edition found 39.9% of RNs and 41.3% of licensed practical nurses intending to leave or retire by 2029, about 1.6 million people, and 138,000 who had already left since 2022. Hospital RN turnover was 17.6% in 2025, up from 16.4% the year before after three years of decline.

Pages ranking for this question quote a 2021 convenience survey's 95% figure as if it were representative, mix hospital nurses with all nurses, and present 2021 turnover peaks as current. This page uses the NCSBN surveys, the Magnet hospital study in JAMA Health Forum, the CDC's health worker series, NSI's 2026 retention report and BLS pay data, states the sample and date next to every figure, and keeps burnout, intent to leave and actual turnover apart.

How many nurses are burned out?

The burnout rate depends on the instrument and the population, so the table gives both.

The NCSBN figure is the most defensible because of its size and its sampling frame, which is the licensure records of participating state boards rather than an opt-in panel. The Magnet hospital study uses the validated Maslach scale on a large sample but covers only accredited hospitals, which tend to have better staffing. The ANF and AMN surveys are larger than most but opt-in, which usually inflates distress measures. Forty-five to fifty percent is the range the better-sampled studies agree on.

The trend since 2018

The CDC's October 2023 Vital Signs report compared health workers in the General Social Survey's Quality of Worklife module in 2018 and 2022. The share who felt burned out very often or often rose from 31.9% to 45.6%. Intent to look for a new job rose from 33% to 44%. Health workers who reported harassment at work were 5.83 times as likely to report anxiety and more than twice as likely to report burnout. The samples are small, 226 and 325, and the finding is a trend across the pandemic rather than a precise level.

Michigan's statewide nurse survey, published by Friese and colleagues in JAMA Network Open in 2024, is the best evidence that the peak has passed. Intent to leave fell from 39.1% in 2022 to 32.0% in 2023, and reported workplace violence fell from 50.2% to 43.4%. Burnout and emotional exhaustion eased by smaller amounts. Our employee burnout statistics page covers the same post-pandemic pattern across the workforce.

Intent to leave against actual turnover

NCSBN's 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey drew on about 800,000 responses and found 39.9% of RNs and 41.3% of LPNs intending to leave nursing or retire by 2029, roughly 1.6 million nurses. Of those, 41.5% cited stress and burnout. The 2022 edition found 100,000 RNs had left during the pandemic and projected 800,000 intending to leave by 2027; the 2024 edition found 138,000 had left since 2022, which is a large number and far below the projection. Intent runs well ahead of behavior here as it does in every workforce.

Actual turnover comes from NSI Nursing Solutions' 2026 retention report, covering 527 hospitals and 965,886 workers for calendar 2025. Staff RN turnover was 17.6%, up from 16.4% in 2024 after falling from a 27.1% peak in 2021. The RN vacancy rate was 8.6%, the average time to fill an RN opening 78 days, and 22.7% of newly hired RNs left within a year. Over five years, the average hospital turned over 106% of its RN workforce. Our employee turnover statistics page sets those figures against other industries.

What nurses say causes it

Staffing is the answer in every survey that asks. In the Magnet hospital study, 87% of nurses rated improving staffing as "very important" to their mental health, far ahead of wellness programs, and the hospitals with the lowest burnout had the highest nurse-to-patient ratios. The study's authors noted that interventions aimed at individual resilience, which hospitals had invested in heavily, were rated least useful by the nurses themselves.

• Inadequate staffing: the top factor in NCSBN, ANF and the Magnet study. In the AMN 2025 survey, 81% wanted flexible scheduling as the top retention measure.
• Workload and patient acuity: nurses in the Magnet study reported caring for more patients than they considered safe on most shifts.
• Violence and harassment: covered in the next section.
• Lack of management support: nurses who rated their manager as supportive reported burnout about 20 points lower in the Magnet study.
• Documentation burden: consistently among the top five, as it is for physicians.

Our workplace stress statistics page covers how understaffing ranks as a stressor across the whole workforce.

Violence and harassment

National Nurses United's 2023 survey of about 1,000 members found 81.6% had experienced workplace violence in the previous year, and the Michigan statewide study found 43.4% of nurses reporting violence in 2023, down from 50.2% in 2022. The CDC's analysis found 13.4% of health workers reported harassment at work in 2022, up from 6.4% in 2018, and that harassed workers had 5.83 times the odds of anxiety and 3.38 times the odds of burnout. The NNU figure is a member survey and runs high; the Michigan figure is a probability sample of licensed nurses and is the better estimate. Either way, violence against nurses is common enough that it belongs in any account of why they leave.

What turnover costs hospitals

NSI puts the average cost of turnover for a bedside RN at $60,090 in 2025, with a range of $47,000 to $73,000 across hospitals, and estimates that each percentage point of RN turnover costs the average hospital about $295,000 a year. The average hospital lost between $4.1 million and $6.4 million to RN turnover in 2025. Those figures cover recruitment, agency and overtime cover, orientation and lost productivity, and they are NSI's model applied to hospital data rather than audited costs. Hospitals set a goal of reducing turnover by 2.6 points in 2025 and missed it; the goal for 2026 is 2.5 points, and 27.6% of hospitals have no measurable goal.

The 22.7% of new RNs who leave within a year is where the money goes. A new graduate who leaves at month ten has absorbed a full orientation cost and returned little. Our onboarding statistics page covers the first-year pattern in other industries.

Pay, openings and the pipeline

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook puts median RN pay at $97,550 a year as of May 2025, with about 180,800 openings projected each year over the decade, most of them replacements for nurses who retire or leave. Employment is projected to grow about 5% over ten years, slower than the health sector as a whole but on a base of 3.3 million jobs. The pipeline is not the constraint: nursing schools turned away about 65,000 qualified applicants in 2024 for lack of faculty and clinical placements, per the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Retention is.

What helps

The Magnet hospital study is the clearest evidence on interventions. Nurses rated staffing improvements, the ability to take breaks, and not being required to work while sick as the most important changes, and resilience training and wellness apps as the least. Hospitals in the top quartile of staffing had burnout rates roughly 15 points below the bottom quartile. Flexible scheduling was the top request in the AMN 2025 survey. And the Michigan data show that where violence fell, intent to leave fell with it. The interventions nurses ask for are structural, and the ones most often offered are individual. Our employee wellness program statistics page covers what the trials say about those.

Reading these figures carefully

The 95% burnout figure that still circulates comes from a 2021 convenience survey by a staffing firm and should not be used. Hospital turnover rates apply to hospital RNs, who are about 60% of the profession, not to all nurses. Intent-to-leave figures overstate exits by a factor of three or more. And the 2021 and 2022 peaks are not current: turnover has fallen ten points from its high, and the Michigan data show intent and violence both easing. A nurse burnout figure without its instrument, sample and year is not telling you much.

Key takeaways

• 45.1% of RNs reported burnout a few times a week or more in NCSBN's 2022 survey of 29,472 nurses. Opt-in surveys run higher, at 56% to 58%.
• 39.9% of RNs and 41.3% of LPNs intend to leave or retire by 2029, about 1.6 million nurses. 138,000 left between 2022 and 2024.
• Hospital RN turnover was 17.6% in 2025, up from 16.4% in 2024 but well below the 27.1% peak in 2021. 22.7% of new RNs leave within a year.
• Health worker burnout rose from 31.9% to 45.6% between 2018 and 2022 in CDC data. Michigan nurses' intent to leave fell from 39.1% to 32.0% between 2022 and 2023.
• 87% of nurses rate improving staffing as very important to their mental health. Resilience training ranks last.
• 43.4% of Michigan nurses reported workplace violence in 2023. Harassed health workers had 5.83 times the odds of anxiety.
• Replacing a bedside RN costs about $60,090. Each point of RN turnover costs the average hospital about $295,000 a year.
• Median RN pay is $97,550 with about 180,800 openings a year. The '95% burned out' figure is a 2021 convenience survey and should not be used.