Healthcare and Nursing Hiring Benchmarks for 2026
Hospitals lost 324,090 registered nurses in 2025 and hired 377,650, a net gain of only about 53,500 against an add rate that fell from 5.6% to 2.9%. Those figures are the backbone of this year's healthcare hiring benchmarks, and they show a sector replacing staff almost as fast as it recruits them. Below are nine numbers every healthcare recruiter should track in 2026, with sources and what good looks like.
Quick Answer
The 2026 healthcare hiring benchmarks to know: registered nurse turnover averages 17.6%, one RN departure costs about $60,090, the RN vacancy rate is 8.6%, and an experienced RN takes 78 days to recruit. Teams that beat these figures win on screening speed, first-year retention and offer acceptance.
What These Healthcare Hiring Benchmarks Are and Why They Matter
A hiring benchmark is a reference number drawn from a large dataset that lets you judge your own performance. In healthcare, the most useful ones track turnover, vacancy, time to fill, early attrition and cost, because clinical roles cannot sit empty without affecting patient care and overtime budgets.
The main source for nursing figures is the 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, which covers calendar year 2025 and, as summarised by Becker's Hospital Review, draws on 527 hospitals in 40 states, 965,886 healthcare workers and 262,405 RNs. One caution: NSI is itself a recruitment firm, so treat its savings estimates as vendor-produced and sense-check them against your own data. For general hiring speed, SHRM's 2025 recruiting benchmarking report covers more than 4,600 organisations and gives independent context.
Treat every benchmark as a starting point for a question rather than a verdict. A hospital with 19% turnover in telemetry may be performing well, while the same rate in a low-acuity unit would be worrying. Context, case mix and local labour supply all change what a good number looks like.
Use these numbers in three ways. First, set targets: if your turnover sits above 17.6% you are below the national average. Second, build a business case: each percentage point of RN turnover costs the average hospital roughly $295,000 a year, which turns a retention initiative into a finance conversation. Third, spot problems early: a rising vacancy rate or a lengthening time to recruit is usually visible in the data months before it reaches the ward.
The 9 Healthcare Hiring Benchmarks Every Recruiter Should Track in 2026
1. RN Turnover Rate
The national average staff RN turnover rate in 2025 was 17.6%, up 1.2 percentage points on 2024. NSI reports that the figure falls to 14.6% when only full-time and part-time RNs are counted, because temporary and agency staff inflate the headline number. Across all hospital employees, turnover was 18.5%.
The trend matters as much as the level. According to Becker's historical table, hospital staff nurse turnover ran at 18.7% in 2020, spiked to 27.1% in 2021, eased to 22.5% in 2022, 18.4% in 2023 and 16.4% in 2024. The 2025 rise is the first meaningful upward move in several years.
How to use it: calculate your own rate as separations divided by average headcount over twelve months, split by unit. A sensible stretch target is below 15%, which is our suggestion rather than a published standard. Anything above 20% in a unit deserves a named owner and a retention plan, and the plan should include a date for review so it does not drift.
2. Cost per RN Turnover
Each bedside RN who leaves costs a hospital an average of $60,090. That is down slightly from $61,110 the year before, but still large. NSI estimates the average hospital loses about $5.19 million a year to RN turnover.
The cost covers advertising, recruiter time, onboarding, orientation, lost productivity and temporary cover. NSI's own figures show why cover is expensive: the average travel nurse fee is $91.23 an hour, against $59.46 for a staff RN including benefits, a premium of more than 50%. It rarely appears as a single line in a budget, which is why it is underestimated. Multiply your annual RN separations by $60,090 for a quick estimate, then compare it with what you spend on retention.
Because one percentage point of turnover equates to roughly $295,000 for the average hospital, even a modest improvement in screening quality and early retention returns real money. Faster, better-matched hiring is a cost-control tool, not only a service level.
3. RN Vacancy Rate
The national RN vacancy rate is 8.6%, and 33.1% of hospitals run at 10% or higher. The average hospital carries about 43 unfilled RN full-time equivalents. NSI changed its method this year, so the drop from 9.6% is not directly comparable with earlier figures.
The historical series from Becker's shows how far the sector has come from the pandemic peak, with average vacancy at 17.0% in 2022 and 15.7% in 2023, before falling to 9.9% in 2024. The improvement is real, but a third of hospitals still sit at the level most executives call a staffing problem.
How to use it: divide unfilled budgeted FTEs by total budgeted FTEs. A sensible stretch target is below 8%, which is our suggestion rather than a published standard. Track it monthly by unit, as a healthy hospital-wide average can hide a critical care or emergency department running at double digits. Pair it with the share of vacancies that have been open longer than 90 days, because long-open roles are the ones that drive overtime, agency use and resignations among the staff left covering them. Review the list with nurse managers every month so recruitment priorities follow clinical need rather than the order requisitions arrived.
4. Time to Recruit an Experienced RN
An experienced RN takes 78 days to recruit on average, five days faster than the prior year. NSI's range runs from 56 to 102 days depending on the hospital, and Magnet-recognised hospitals averaged 68 days.
Every day of delay has a cost: overtime, agency spend and burnout among the nurses who cover the gap. NSI reports an average travel nurse fee of $91.23 an hour against $59.46 an hour for a staff RN including benefits, so each unfilled week is expensive.
Strong teams aim for 60 days or fewer, our suggested target, while the average sits at 78. The gap is rarely sourcing alone. It is usually slow screening, slow scheduling and slow decisions. Cutting two or three days from each of those steps is the fastest route to a better number.
A practical way to find the delay is to timestamp every stage for the last twenty hires: application received, first review, interview invitation, interview held, offer sent, offer accepted and start date. The longest gaps are almost always waiting time, not working time, and waiting time is the cheapest thing to remove. Set a service level for each handoff, for example first review within two working days, and report against it weekly.
5. First-Year Attrition
22.7% of new RN hires leave within their first year, and first-year RNs account for 29.0% of all RN separations. Across all hospital roles, 29.5% of new hires leave within a year and account for 35.6% of total turnover, according to NSI.
First-year attrition is the most controllable number on this list, because it depends heavily on hiring decisions. Candidates who understand the role, the unit and the shift pattern before accepting are less likely to leave. Structured interviews, realistic previews and a strong preceptor programme all reduce early exits.
To measure it, divide hires who left within twelve months by total hires in the cohort. A sensible stretch target is below 15%, our suggestion rather than a published standard. If yours is above 25%, review what candidates were told at interview before you review pay.
6. Specialty Turnover
Behavioural health leads RN specialty turnover at 22.5%, followed by emergency at 20.7%, telemetry at 19.5% and step down at 19%. Those four sit above the 17.6% national average.
Over five years the picture is starker. NSI's cumulative figures show telemetry at 117.8%, step down at 115.4% and emergency at 113.6%, meaning these units have effectively replaced their entire workforce more than once. Regional differences add another layer, with the South-East averaging 18.7% and the North-Central region 16.2%.
How to use it: benchmark each unit against its specialty figure, not the hospital average. A 19% rate in telemetry is typical. The same rate in a low-acuity unit would be a warning sign. Concentrate recruitment effort and retention budget where the numbers are worst.
It also helps to ask why people leave each unit. Exit interviews, stay interviews and short pulse surveys will tell you whether the cause is workload, scheduling, leadership or pay, and each cause needs a different fix. A hiring process that sets honest expectations about the pace of an emergency department will always retain better than one that glosses over it.
7. Offer Acceptance Rate
Only 51% of candidates accepted a job offer in their most recent application process in 2025, down from 74% in 2023. That finding comes from Gartner's candidate survey and covers all industries, so use it as a general indicator rather than a clinical benchmark.
Healthcare candidates often hold several offers at once, which makes speed decisive. In practice, that means decisions should be made within days of the final interview, references should be requested in parallel, and offers should be explained clearly, including shift patterns, supervision and progression routes. A slow offer loses people to the next hospital, agency or travel contract. Gartner also found that only 26% of candidates trust AI to evaluate them fairly, so explain how screening works and keep a human involved in decisions.
Measure it as accepted offers divided by offers extended. A sensible stretch target for clinical roles is 85% or higher, our suggestion rather than a published standard. If you sit below 70%, look first at time between final interview and offer.
8. Time to Fill for Non-Clinical Roles
The median time to fill a non-executive position is 39 calendar days. SHRM's 2025 recruiting benchmarking reports that the figure is lower than the previous year, and that over 2 in 3 organisations struggled to hire for open positions.
Support functions are easy to neglect because nursing dominates the headlines, yet delays there quietly slow the whole organisation. A vacant scheduler or coder pushes work onto clinicians.
Hospitals employ far more than nurses. Administrators, coders, pharmacy technicians, porters, schedulers and finance staff all compete in the wider labour market. SHRM also found that the median share of non-executive positions filled externally rose from 93% to 97%, so internal mobility is shrinking as a source.
Use 39 days as your yardstick for support roles. If your administrative hires take 55 days, the delay is probably process, not market. Remove approval steps, pre-screen applicants and book interviews within 48 hours of shortlisting.
9. Application Volume and Authenticity
The number of applicants per open role in the United States has doubled since spring 2022. LinkedIn's research, reported by HR Dive, also found that 66% of recruiters say finding quality talent has become harder and 93% of talent acquisition professionals plan to grow their AI use in 2026.
Volume brings a quality problem, and the extra applications rarely mean extra good candidates. A single posting for a staff nurse can attract hundreds of responses, many of them unqualified or generic, and recruiters end up reading CVs instead of speaking to people. The result is slower shortlists for exactly the roles where speed matters most.
The quality problem has a second edge. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake, and 6% of candidates in its survey admitted to interview fraud. Credential checks are non-negotiable in healthcare, where a fabricated licence is a patient-safety risk.
Track applications per vacancy and the share that reach interview. A sensible aim is to interview a small, well-chosen share of applicants and still fill roles quickly, because screening is accurate. Screening tools such as Klearskill, which reports 97% AI screening accuracy, help by ranking CVs against the role so recruiters spend time on the strongest candidates.
How to Get Started
Pick three numbers, not nine. A sensible first set is RN turnover by unit, time to recruit an experienced RN and first-year attrition. Pull the last twelve months of data from your HR system, calculate each figure with the formulas above and compare it with the national average.
Next, find the slowest stage in your funnel. Map the days between application, screening, interview, offer and start date, and look for any step that takes more than three working days. Screening is usually the biggest single delay, and it is also the easiest to automate.
Then agree a target for each number, name an owner and review monthly. Share the benchmark sources with finance so the cost per RN turnover figure of $60,090 anchors the budget conversation. Keep the dashboard simple enough to read in five minutes, because a report nobody opens will not change behaviour. Revisit the full list quarterly, and update your targets when NSI and SHRM publish new figures.
Finally, document what you change. If you shorten interview scheduling or introduce structured screening, record the date and compare the next quarter with the last. Benchmarks only help when they lead to a decision, and a short log of changes makes it easy to show which ones worked.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most important healthcare hiring benchmarks in 2026?
The core set is RN turnover at 17.6%, RN vacancy at 8.6%, cost per RN turnover at $60,090, time to recruit an experienced RN at 78 days and first-year RN attrition at 22.7%. Together they show how fast you lose staff, how long gaps last and what they cost.
What is the average nurse turnover rate in 2026?
The 2026 NSI report puts staff RN turnover at 17.6% for calendar year 2025, up 1.2 percentage points. For full-time and part-time RNs only, the rate is 14.6%. Behavioural health, emergency and telemetry units run higher than the average.
How long does it take to hire a nurse?
An experienced RN takes about 78 days to recruit, with a range of 56 to 102 days across hospitals. Magnet-recognised hospitals averaged 68 days. Non-executive roles in general take a median of 39 days to fill, according to SHRM.
How much does it cost to replace a nurse?
NSI estimates an average of $60,090 per bedside RN who leaves. The cost covers recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity and temporary cover. For the average hospital, that adds up to roughly $5.19 million a year.
What is a good healthcare hiring benchmark for first-year retention?
The national figure is that 22.7% of new RN hires leave within a year. A sensible stretch target is below 15%. If yours is above 25%, review interview honesty, onboarding and preceptor support before looking at pay.
Are these healthcare hiring benchmarks reliable?
They come from large datasets, but NSI is a recruitment firm and its methods changed this year, so vacancy comparisons with earlier years are not exact. SHRM and Gartner figures cover all industries. Use them as reference points and calibrate against your own history.
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