CalNurs

Thanks for those kind words Cyram Only way this vicious cycle can stop is if all our Nursing schools shutdown for atleast 2-3 years. But we know they will never do that. I am seeing the ads for RN, BSN, MSN programs all around me .. even here at allnurses.com. New students (cows-to-be-slaughtered !) are braught into the Nursing Ponzi scheme as they eagerly await for their "Acceptance Letter" into the program ... And Nursing Institutions and Academia is still thumping about "Nursing Shortage" ... Its almost mafia like. Besides high unemployment of new grads RN, I am seeing another interesting outcome of the vicious cycle. Because of high unemploymnet and huge pool of lightly experienced nurses; RN salaries are rapidly declining. Some of my linked-ins are putting $10-12 per hour on resume just to get the foot in. Personally I was ready to work on minimum wages if clinics/hospital can even offer me an RN position. At the end-of-day, I have to pay off my education debts and bring food onto the table. I can not keep on searching for a job indefinitly that realistically is just not there. To top it off, from my perspective, there is now no real difference between working as a nurse or flipping burgers at McDonalds or working as a retail clerk. They all are paying pretty much same. Its just that some are a bit more glorified than others.

Try to relocate outside USA. There is true shortage of nurses in Third World countries (esp in South America and India). You can keep on searching and waiting here in US but it may be a while before you can find anything. In the mean time you are wasting precious years of your life.

Yes I did the whole llinked-in, facebook, twitter route. Tried extensive networking ... joined local religious groups, churchs, borderline cults and even offered to convert to Judaism (if they can offer me a job as an RN in a certain Jewish Sounding Hospital on West Coast). Nothing appears to be working ... and I have been doing this now for almost a year ... HR folks have been telling me that they receive thousands of resumes for a single RN position and are simply overwhelmed. There are some new Grads from 2008/2009 batch that have not yet got their first job offer. There is one thing that does appear to work for some of my batchmates. I mentioned it in other threads as well. There are easy opportunities to be had if you are willing to relocate outside USA. After going crazy with their job hunts, some of my batchmates finally moved to South America (Guatemala and Peru) and India after accepting Nursing Positions there. According to them there is indeed true shortage of nurses in these third world countries. Pay is not great and lifestyle/working style is third-world-like but yes they do have a Nursing Job/Career ... I guess its better than sitting idle or enrolling in BSN/MSN simply because we can not find jobs as RN. At the current rate it may take an entire decade for the available new Grads pool to find the Nursing positions. Not to mention that we have a new batch of hundreds of LPN/RN ready to be graduated in couple of months. They will also start competing with this unemployed pool of thousands of new grad RNs and the vicious cycle continues.

Oh yeah and to top it off ... All those new grads RN/LPN from last batches who are searching actively ... be ready next batch of freshly graduated RN/LPN will be joining the unemployment and would be competing with you in about a month or so. Hundreds of fresh LPN/RNs would be competing with already unemployed thousands of new grad LPN/RNs. Please raise the concern and request your respective schools to Stop their nursing programs for sometime before all this mess can settle down. At the current it may take upto a decade for all the existing new grad pool to find some employment

Oh Please grow up ... OP is correct and all the power to him/her ... just ask any of us "Thousands of New Grad RN/LPNs" who were advised by the Senior Nurses and Academia of this "Noble" Profession to take it up because there is "Severe Shortage" of nurses. After giving my 3 years to RN Program and 1 year of job hunting for an RN position, I am now working as checkout clerk at Walmart, proudly displaying my RN badge and advsing others not to do the same mistake. Yes I did ask all the Nursing Faculty before joing the program about the prospects ... and trusted them because of the Ethics and Integrity of the "noble" profession that they were part of. But still they all lied to our faces (Severe Shortage of Nurses) and misguided us on purpose. Its about time we tell the truth ... DO NOT EVER consider Nursing as a profession ... You will never get a job and even if you found one by mistake it will be pretty close to Slavery. I support the mission to stop people from going into Nursing. Do not believe the Media Hype and that J&J Ad ... thats all bunch of crap .... Do not waste 3+ years of your time, money and energy to become an unemployed RN/BSN .... you are better off becoming a plumber/mechanic/engineer.

Expect this trend to continue ... More and more such facilities are likly to exploit the New Grads ... Here in So Cal one of the better known Hospitals have recently laid off almost all of their CNAs. They are now openly putting New Grad RNs and LPNs as "volunteers" for these CNA positions. I went to the orientation and the floor manager said hospital is actually doing new grads a favor by putting them as "volunteers" for these CNA positions. Towards the end she did remind us to bring a check to pay for the mandatory hospital volunteer "Uniforms and ID Badges". Its all very similar to slavery and total exploitation.

As a "new grad RN who is looking for a job for the past 1 year", my advise would be Run Away and Stay Away from any Nursing Classes / Certifications / License ... unless untill the school gives a written Moneyback Gurantee to get you an RN job upon completion. After wasting 3 years to get my LPN and RN, and 1 year of unsuccessful job hunting for an RN/LPN position ... I am now proudly displaying my "Proud to be a Nurse" badge, serving customers at my local Walmart Checkout lane. Dont believe the hype ... there are no jobs for New Grad Nurses in US. After wasting a lot of time in US trying to find an RN position, some of my batchmates (they are young enough) have taken up jobs in South America (Guatemala and Peru) and India. Wages and working conditions are as we expect those to be in Third World countries but atleast they are getting some experience and not sitting idle.

Long Time Reader First Time Poster. I graduated from RN program last year and have been searching for the job in California. After almost 1 year of extensive search in San Diego, OC, LA, Bakersfield, SLO, Salinas, SFO and beyond, I have decided to give up. There are absolutly NO NURSING JOBS for new grads in California. I am ready to move to any other part of country but based on what I hear on this forum, its almost same scene everywhere else in the country. I applied for Nursing Assistant and LVN positions as well but learned that hospitals and other health care facilities already have plenty of RNs working as Nursing Assistants/LVNs and plenty more are lined up to pick up the same. Here are my "lessons learned" based on 1 year of job hunting as a new grad Nurse and 3 years of Nursing Education:- 1) The whole "Rewarding Nursing Career with endless opportunities" thing is actually a big scam and a ponzi scheme getting played on all of us who started or switched over to this career. 2) Senior Nurses, Nursing Colleges and Main Stream Media is running this scam to suck money from us. It was the duty of Senior Nurses and Nursing Academics to advise new students about NO JOBS in nursing. But they did exact opposite and misguided us all. They knew about it all along but misguided us on purpose. So much for the sake of ethics and integrity of this profession. Dont believe those Yahoo Articles and Main Stream Media hype about the jobs in Health Care. There are NONE. If you are lucky enough to find one ... you will probably work on minimum wages only. 3) To all the students who want to take this as a profession ... Dont believe the Johnson & Johnson Ad ... Thats all a bunch of crap. You are better off becoming a plumber/mechanic/engineer than a nurse. There are no jobs in nursing. You can get the hyped "Feel-Good" experience of nursing by volunteering at your local senior center or at your kids school. Dont waste your time, money and energy on 3+ years of RN/BSN, hoping to get the same fulfilling job experience. 4) To all the RNs in my situation ... if you dont have any short term financial issues, stay focussed on your research. It may take a while to find anything decent. I spent almost 3+ years of my life, lots of money, energy and time away from my kids to become a nurse. I can not get any of that back. At this point, I am all loaded with Debt and no job to bring food on the table. So with a broken heart I say Good Bye to Nursing. Starting at my local Walmart this week as checkout clerk.