Job Market for Nurses

Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN · Mar 27, 2021

CA has a mandatory ratio law now, which has been helpful. Also, COVID has resulted in more than usual burnout, so there are openings. Not sure I'd want to dive right in as a new grad, but needs must.

I'll be interested to hear what the folks with boots on the ground there are saying.

ThursdayNight, CNA · Mar 27, 2021

When people stop getting diseases or illnesses, healthcare will shut down globally.

Employers are still hiring.

Sour Lemon · Mar 28, 2021

23 hours ago, joonilchoe said:

So near early 2000s the job market in California for nurses was tough. A lot of hospitals closed down new nurse programs and most hospitals were requiring acute experience that most new grads couldn't get. Didn't help that more and more people were pursuing nursing when few were getting hired.

Where's the market now? Have a lot of people asking me but can't tell them as I moved onto a different career.

California is a big place, and things are very odd right now. I'm outside of LA, and what I've observed is that it was tough for new graduates, but not impossible for flexible new graduates. Rns with BSNs were highly preferred, especially when hiring new graduates with no experience. LVNs were shut out of acute care completely (in many hospitals).

Recently, there's been a LOT of movement and a lot of desperate hiring due to covid. New grad RNs have been welcomed at my hospital, as have new grad LVNs. It was a great window for inexperienced nurses, although orientation tended to be short and brutal.

Now that we have covid vaccines, things are dying down again and we have tons of excess staff. It seems like my hospital is still hiring a lot, afraid of another outbreak, but I expect that the window will close. New graduates who gained experience are already moving on to their "dream" jobs. Other people are quitting because they get canceled too often. I fear the LVNs will be laid off en masse at some point, as was done years ago when the hospital decided on an RN only staff.

That's what's going on in my corner.

JBMmom, MSN, NP · Mar 28, 2021

42 minutes ago, Sour Lemon said:

I fear the LVNs will be laid off en masse at some point, as was done years ago when the hospital decided on an RN only staff.

This happened in our hospital about 11 years ago. I was still doing my clinicals and some of the BEST nurses to work with were the LVNs. So unfortunate that the hospital made the blanket decision to eliminate all of their positions.

There are a couple that still work at the hospital, but they've been transferred to tech positions. Fortunately they were able to keep their salary, but couldn't remain in a nursing role.

Sour Lemon · Mar 28, 2021

13 minutes ago, JBMmom said:

There are a couple that still work at the hospital, but they've been transferred to tech positions. Fortunately they were able to keep their salary, but couldn't remain in a nursing role.

That's what they did in my hospital before the eventual layoff. The LVNs we have now are able to pass medication, but not allowed to have their own patients or chart on anything ...except medications they give, of course.

LibraNurse27, BSN, RN · Mar 28, 2021

Here in northern CA it seems it is still hard to get a new grad job, but I did notice my hospital was hiring a few new grads when I left. As always it was a bit easier to get into my county hospital than John Muir/Kaiser/Sutter/Stanford who pay more. Those places do have new grad programs with thousands of applicants and only about 15 get picked =( But even those were shut down due to not wanting to train people during covid. Not sure when they will re-open.

As for LVNs there were a few who were grandfathered in at my hospital but they stopped hiring new LVNs onto the floors. I think in ER they had a few, and a lot in the clinics. In the surgery center I work at now the pre-op nurses are mostly LVNs, because they can pay them less. They can do the pre-op questions, insert IVs, prep pts, etc. The RNs just do the heart and lung assessments and address any abnormal findings.