Nursing market cools, new grads have a tough time finding jobs

THANK YOU Baltimore Business Journal for being a media outlet that is finally telling the reality of what's going on in the nursing market today! I'm so tired of friends and family assuming that nursing is completely immune from the economy, that you could drop a resume on the lobby floor of any hospital as a new grad and get a call within the hour offering a job in a specialty unit making a bazillion dollars an hour with your own personal concierge. They think this because it's what all the rest of the media is telling them, but it just is not true as any nursing student preparing for graduation can tell you. As for the advice to new grads to move to Texas, I'll just say be careful where you go. Some places here may still be desperate, but in Austin (where I currently live) the market is entirely saturated. My classmates and I calculated about 2 new nursing grads for every GN position available throughout the two healthcare systems here. There will probably be some openings in nursing homes and doctor's offices, but not the kind of jobs we expected when we started school. Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are much larger cities, and Houston in particular is a major healthcare center in the US, so they may have more demand, but don't assume you can go there and necessarily get a job.

I don't know why, it just makes me feel vindicated to finally see a story like this in the news. Am I crazy?!

Yeah this scares me. I'm a LPN but just graduated my RN program and waiting on the NCLEX. There is about 1-2 pages worth of health care jobs in my area. Last year at this time, there was probably about 7 pages and multiple sign on bonuses. Perhaps I graduated a few months too late :-/ Relocating isn't an option for me and I'm sure a lot of nurses are in that same boat.

Consider moving to Texas?

I don't know how it is in other parts of Texas, but here in Houston I've been applying for first internship and then non-internship positions non-stop since the end of January and I still have yet to have even an interview let alone a job!

No, you're not crazy. I start (a very expensive) accelerated program in September and everyone brushes off my concerns about finding a job now as a new grad to be able to pay student loans when they go in to repayment. I don't think my anxiety is unreasonable at all. Interesting that the article focused on Maryland- friends of ours from Baltimore said when they were visiting that Baltimore is desperate for nurses and that there are all these ad campaigns encouraging people to go in to nursing.

It *is* nice to be vindicated, because it sucks to be getting all this advice and assurances from people who know nothing about the industry.

What will you do?

Hopefully, you did not enter the profession only for employment and hopefully there will be employment for you when you need it. I think, over all, things will be good for nursing grads. Just be willing to work whatever area you can gain entry to, at least, at first.

I'm using my resources- referrals from those I work with, people I know, maybe even neighbors who know me. Someone has to know someone- ya know what I mean? I still have a job as a LPN and I can keep it when I get my RN. I might have to stay put until then and that makes me so sad

Well, I certainly didn't enter this profession to hang my degree on the wall and *not* work. Knowing there was an expanding job market for nurses was definitely a factor in deciding to go to nursing school. As were salary and geographical flexibility and a desire to have a concrete, non-abstract skill set that would allow me to tangibly improve the quality and condition of people's lives.

But I'm not sure how having other reasons to enter nursing besides employment will help me better weather months of job searching. I'll still have loans to repay, I'll still have bills.

The hospital I work at is barely hanging on. I don't know from day to day if I will have a job. All the hospitals around here are on hiring freezes. But you still here of the "nursing shortage."