"The labor market sounds a lot like the Woody Allen joke," Bloomberg columnist and economist Allison Schrager, PhD, wrote in a Jan. 25 opinion piece. "The food is terrible and there is so little of it."

Eleven of the 20 hospitals with the highest contract labor expenditures are located in California, accounting for the top 30 percent. 

IAM Healthcare — a division of the 600,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers — has called upon Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health and Minneapolis-based Fairview Health System to halt their proposed merger. 

The highest-earning group of men is spending more time off the clock, according to a study reported by The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 26.

Hours before St. Margaret's Health-Peru (Ill.) is scheduled to temporarily close, the hospital issued an apology to employees and the community for the way the news was delivered.

Daytona Beach, Fla.-based Halifax Health is ramping up security at its facilities after a fatal shooting in the Select Medical long-term acute care facility within AdventHealth Daytona Beach, NBC affiliate WESH reported Jan. 24.

More than half of the nearly 6,000 University of Iowa employees who participated in a recent survey said they have "seriously considered" leaving the university in the last 12 months, The Courier reported Jan. 25. 

Centennial, Colo.-based Centura Health completed the acquisition of St. Elizabeth Hospital in May. That hospital, in the northeast part of the state, is now offering $30,000 sign-on bonuses for night nurses, among other financial benefits for staff, according to a Jan. 25 report in The Fort Morgan Times.

Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare is providing more than $300,000 in grants to connect high school students and unemployed job-seekers with healthcare career opportunities. 

Fewer than one-third of U.S. employees are engaged at work, according to a new Gallup report. This marks the second consecutive year the measure has dropped, falling from 36 percent in 2020 to 32 percent in 2022. 

Long COVID-19 is keeping a significant number of Americans out of the workforce, according to a Jan. 24 report from the New York State Insurance Fund.

Nurse burnout has been on the radar of healthcare leaders for several years now, and there’s no doubt the Covid pandemic has turned a problem into a crisis. One aspect of nurse burnout that has come to the forefront is how it’s affecting younger nurses.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is laying off 337 employees to reduce costs amid widespread hospital financial challenges, according to a U.S. Department of Labor filing.

Most healthcare workers in critical care settings experience on-the-job violence, with 25 percent saying they were willing to quit because of the issue, according to a global survey presented Jan. 21 at the Society of Critical Care Medicine's 2023 Critical Care Congress. 

A group of 10 New York lawmakers is targeting the state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

Four states have recently proposed staffing ratios, which would limit the number of patients a nurse could be assigned at once. 

Massachusetts lawmakers are filing legislation this week that would mandate nurse-to-patient ratios — following in the footsteps of Washington and Oregon with a statewide push toward safe staffing. 

Oregon lawmakers will consider nurse staffing legislation this session that is opposed by hospitals but backed by the state's largest nurses union, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported Jan. 18. 

The majority of nurses work at under-staffed hospitals — and it's causing them to rethink their careers as their stress extends beyond the hospital, a recent survey found. 

The U.S. economy continues to see the effects of the pandemic, with 2.6 million fewer Americans participating in the U.S. labor force compared to workforce participation before COVID-19, Bloomberg reported Jan. 18.