Nurses remain in high demand in latest job postings report

MONTGOMERY, ALA. — Online job postings for registered nurses continue to dominate online job postings in Alabama, according to the latest report from the Alabama Department of Labor.

Collected and analyzed by the ADL’s Labor Market Information Division, data on online job postings throughout the month of March show that there were 4,184 postings for nurse positions, followed by retail salespersons at 3,312, and retail supervisors at 2,603.

Like much of the country, Alabama has struggled with staffing shortages at medical facilities, particularly with nurses.

As of March, Alabama has an average of 9.73 nurses for every 1,000 residents, and as of 2022, had just shy of 50,000 registered nurses in the state. As of last October, it was estimated that Alabama had a nursing shortage of around 7,200.

The news comes as Alabama lawmakers have passed legislation from Gov. Kay Ivey establishing the School of Health Sciences meant to offer students a specialized academy for careers in health care.

The Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences will be a tuition-free public high school. The school will be located in Demopolis but would take in students from around the state. The proposal is aimed at trying to address a shortage of healthcare workers in the state.

A survey conducted last year by the Alabama Board of Nursing, however, suggests that Alabama’s nursing shortage could increase dramatically in the near future, with 38,727 Alabama nurses indicating that they intend on leaving the profession within the next five years.

While the ABN projected that around 25,000 new graduates would apply for nurse licenses in Alabama during that same five-year window, the close to 39,000 existing nurses who said they were likely to leave the profession would still increase the nurse shortfall from 7,200 to as high as 14,000.

Today, the median salary for nurses in Alabama is $56,570, the second-lowest median pay in the nation, ahead of only South Dakota. In Hawaii, for instance, the state with the highest median salary, nurses make $102,450.

A total of 84,247 jobs were posted online in March, an increase of 1.4% over February. The employer with the most online ads was Walmart with 1,441 postings, followed by Huntsville Hospital with 1,066, UAB Medicine with 934, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham with 793.

Less than 31,000 of the total 84,247 jobs that were posted in March included salaries, and of those, 9,250 had salaries of more than $60,000, 5,261 had salaries between $48,000-$60,000, 8,471 had salaries between $32,000-$44,000, and 7,948 had salaries of less than $32,000.

Alabama’s unemployment rate was a low 3% in March and its labor force participation rate was 57.4%, among the lowest in the nation.

While state lawmakers have moved a number of bills this session designed to improve the state’s labor participation rate, Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington noted that the number of Alabamians entering the workforce has improved over the last several months, if not moderately.

“The number of prime age people that are holding down jobs continues to increase,” Washington said in a statement. 

“That number is very close to a full 80 percent of prime age individuals working. We remain hopeful that this trend will continue throughout the year, especially as the state works to raise its overall labor force participation rate.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.