The amount of registered nurses who reported being "extremely satisfied" with their jobs fell 12 percentage points between 2018 and 2022, federal data shows.
The data comes from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, an annual poll conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration and U.S. Census Bureau. The latest version of the survey, released in March, includes responses from 49,234 registered nurses polled in 2022 and early 2023. HRSA also operates an interactive data dashboard that compares 2018 and 2022 survey responses in key areas, such as nursing demographics, employment and job satisfaction.
The data demonstrates a steep drop in job satisfaction among licensed and employed nurses across all practice settings. In 2022, just 28% of nurses were extremely satisfied with work, down from 40% in 2018. Over the same time period, the amount of nurses who were moderately dissatisfied with their jobs increased six percentage points from 9% to 15%.
The full data breakdown is below:
|
Nurse job satisfaction |
2018 |
2022 |
|
Extremely dissatisfied |
2% |
5% |
|
Moderately dissatisfied |
9% |
15% |
|
Moderately satisfied |
49% |
52% |
|
Extremely satisfied |
40% |
28% |
View the full dashboard here.