A new annual survey report warns of sharp declines in nurses’ opinions of their jobs and careers over the past year.
Published this week, it found a year-over-year drop in reported job satisfaction among nearly 2,100 nurses from 55% to 47%. It is the first time since the 2022 low of 28% that the measure has not improved from the previous year, according to nurse.org, which conducted the survey.
Job satisfaction responses varied by specialty: Nurse educators and NICU nurses most frequently reported being satisfied, while only 23% of progressive care, 31% of geriatric care, 34% of telemetry, and 35% of emergency nurses said the same.
Meanwhile, 43% of nurses said they are likely to leave the profession next year, up from 39% last year, and 23% said they are likely to leave the profession next year, up from 15%.
“None of these changes are catastrophic on their own,” he said. 2026 State of Nursing Survey Report read. “But taken together, they suggest that the structural problems facing nursing were not resolved during the brief recovery period that followed the pandemic. At best, they were partially and temporarily alleviated.”
On the other hand, the percentage of respondents who said they were happy with their decision to become a nurse remained broadly stable, at 68%, as did the percentage who said they would recommend a nursing career to friends or family, at 47%.
These rates suggest that “nurses are not losing faith in the profession. They are losing patience with the conditions,” the report reads. However, when asked about factors that have kept nurses at the bedside, financial need topped responses by a wide margin (cited by 41%) and outranked other factors such as commitment to patient care (28%) and personal satisfaction (24%).
As for those frustrations, 42% of respondents said staffing in their unit had gotten worse over the past year, compared to 8% who said it had improved, while 42% said their working conditions had gotten worse, compared to 8% who reported conditions had improved.
Reports of workplace violence “continue to be alarming,” with 52% saying they experienced verbal threats or aggressive language, 27% physical assaults, and 10% sexual harassment or unwanted sexual contact in the past year. 34 per cent said they did not feel safe from violence in their workplace and, among the third of nurses who said they had reported their most serious incident to their employer, 16 per cent said no action was taken, while others said they did not know what had changed (9 per cent) or ultimately felt blamed or discouraged (5 per cent).
“Many nurses choose not to report any incidents, citing the belief that nothing will change,” the report reads. “Such fatalism, acquired after years of inadequate institutional response, means that the true scale of workplace violence in nursing is almost certainly larger than survey data reflect.”
The survey also addresses the financial well-being of nurses. Here, 55% said they increased their compensation over the past year, yet 25% said their income barely or does not cover essential monthly expenses and 37% said they couldn’t cover an unexpected $1,000 expense without going into debt. 37 per cent said financial pressures drove their decision to take on extra shifts or overtime in the past year, while 15 per cent said they had taken on a second job.
“None of this erases the progress of recent years. Burnout and mental health metrics improved dramatically between 2022 and 2024, and nurses’ fundamental love for the profession has remained stable,” the report reads. “But the 2026 data is a clear sign that improvement is not inevitable and that without significant and sustained action on staffing, wages, security and support, the gains of recent years will continue to erode.”
