People looking to begin on a journey towards a new career in nursing will find many supporting statistics and facts to help encourage them along the way. There are many positive trends in the field currently, including a huge supply of jobs, a short time to obtaining a BSN, large salaries, diverse workforces, and much more. Make sure you’re on the right path and take a look at these stats about a nursing career.

* You can get started as an RN in less than a year by taking an accelerated nursing degree program, allowing you to jumpstart your career and get going immediately.

* Employers prefer candidates with a BSN, and more people entering the workforce are carrying it. About 50% of RNs today have a bachelor’s degree or higher, up from just 25% in 1980. Organizations are calling for further increases to 65% or more carrying this level of education.

* About 62% of RNs work in hospitals, making it by and large the most common area of employment for a nursing career. But that percentage is way down, and shows that nearly 40% of nurses work elsewhere, including outpatient care facilities, nursing homes, the homes of clients, physicians offices and more.

* Diving into those statistics more, 14.2% of RNs work in community health settings, 10.5% are employed in outpatient care centers, and 5.3% work in long-term care facilities, amongst other options mentioned above.

* RNs now collectively have an average age of 47 years old, up from 40 years old in 1980. What this means is it’s an aging workforce that drastically needs new individuals to begin replacing the ones retiring.

* Just how many new or replacement RNs will there be a need for? By 2018, the BLS says it will be 580,000, well over half a million, which means fantastic job opportunities and your choice of destinations.

* Another projection by a different organization states that by 2020 there will be 800,000 unfilled nursing positions. This creates a near infinite supply of jobs and nursing career options for those with an accredited BSN joining the workforce.

* Salary levels are on the rise for RNs right now, who on average brought home nearly $61,000 in salary in 2007. RNs with a BSN or a higher level diploma can make even more than that, and with years of experience under your belt, salaries can approach or exceed the $100k level.

* There are more nurses than physicians, by a fourfold margin. Nurses are the primary means of care within hospitals, and as mentioned, are also branching out into new work settings and organizations.

* Nursing students account for half of all of the students studying any healthcare field or profession.

* According to the BLS, through the year 2018, the nursing field will be amongst the quickest growing sectors in any industry, and with the stats mentioned already, that leads to hundreds of thousands of new jobs being created.

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