The Current State of Travel Nursing

Amidst the widespread infection, healthcare providers such as hospitals, private practices, and clinics faced significant challenges in acquiring essential resources beyond just personal protective equipment (PPE) and masks. The surge in demand for nurses and other healthcare professionals during this time led to an increased necessity for travel nurses. This unprecedented demand further resulted in remarkably high salaries for travel nurses.

Travel Nurse Salary Temporary increase

According to data from Vivian Health, travel nursing salaries reached nearly $3,500 per week by December 2020. However, the peak occurred approximately a year later, with rates soaring to nearly $4,000 per week. Between January 2020 and December 2021, the average pay for travel nurses experienced remarkable growth of over 99%. From December 2022 onwards, travel nursing salaries began to stabilize at approximately $3,100 per week.

Where did the increase in nurse pay come from?

The higher pay for nurses didn’t come out of nowhere. It didn’t magically occur out of thin air. Keep in mind that most hospitals are for-profit so they like to keep their labor costs low and maximize their revenue. Most hospitals wouldn’t have raised their pay nearly as much is they weren’t getting funding from somewhere.

Federal funding: one-way hospitals had money was through the Allocation of Provider Relief Fund.
- The fund gave $178 Billion dollars to hospitals and medical facilities.
  - General Grants: $72.4 Billion
  - High infection hospitals: $20.7 Billion
  - Reimbursement for uninsured infected patients: $10 Billion
  - Phase 4 allocation: $17 Billion
  - Unallocated $7.1 Billion
  - That adds up to about $127 Billion dollars total sent to most major hospitals. According to the American Hospital Association, there were about 6,129 Major hospitals. If distributed evenly that is about $20.7 million dollars per hospital. In reality, bigger hospitals got a bigger cut and bigger hospitals are where travel nurses usually end up.
  - https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals
  - https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/funding-for-health-care-providers-during-the-pandemic-an-update/#:~:text=The%20CARES%20Act%20also%20appropriated,billion%20in%20total%20PPP%20loans.
PPP Loans: Federal Government loans that didn’t need to be paid back.
- Hospitals received about $68 Billion from the initial PPP loans and then another $29 Billion for the second distribution.
Extra State funding: Besides Federal money being given to healthcare facilities States also increased their budgets and gave hospitals more funding.
- Illinois: The overall healthcare budget for Illinois was increased by about $250 Million for hospitals
  - Safety Net Hospitals (24): Funding increased $81.4 million
  - Critical Access Hospitals (51): Funding increased $14 million
  - High Medicaid Hospitals (30): Funding increased $86 million
  - General Acute Hospitals (69): Funding increased $62.1 million
  - Psych Hospital (10): Funding increased $2.4 million
  - Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals (6): Funding increased $1.2 million
  - Rehab Hospitals (4): Funding increased $2.3 million
  - https://www.illinois.gov/news/press-release.21790.html

Decrease in Travel Nurse Pay

There has been an overall decrease in travel nursing pay and even an overall decrease in travel nursing contracts. What is driving this change and what is pushing the cost for nurses down?

Less Government funding
- The main factor for the decrease in travel nurse pay is a decrease in government money. Hospitals aren’t going to hire more nurses if they don’t need to even though the employees do. That’s exactly why there are no nationwide ratios.
- In 2023 according to Macrotrends hospitals are having some of the lowest profit margins since 2016 but are overall up from 2022.
- https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HCSG/healthcare-services/net-profit-margin
Are there fewer jobs?
- According to government projections (US Bureau of Labor and Statistics), an estimated annual increase of over 203,000 registered nurse positions is expected to be generated between the years 2021 and 2031.
- According to Indeed, states like California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania each have over 150,000 – 320,000 new RN positions opening each year.
- There are 290,000 Registered positions posted on Indeed. According to Vivian, there are 83,000 travel nurse positions available.
- https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-many-jobs-are-available-for-registered-nurse
- There are no fewer jobs. People are always getting sick. Go to your local Walmart and you can see all the comorbidities. Nurses are needed everywhere.
Seasonal changes
- Always keep in mind that nursing has multiple specialties and each specialty peaks at different parts of the year. For example in the warmer months as the season changes pediatrics gets hit harder because children start to get respiratory issues and the OR trends up because people tend to get more surgeries in the warmer months.
- During the winter months, there is a peak in older people getting sick so specialties like ED and ICU tend to get busier.
Staff incentives
- There has also been an increase in incentives for staff nurses. Incentives such as higher sign-on bonuses if you stay an X amount of years. There are also nits that offer pick-up bonuses of a couple of hundred dollars extra per shift.

Overall State of the Travel Nursing Market

This happens every year. I’ve been travel nursing for the last 3 years and a year before the pandemic and this was always the talk of the summer. Travel nursing is always going to give you higher pay than your staff job done in the right way. Same way you can get screwed as a staff nurse you can get skewed as a traveler if you don’t do your homework. Travel nursing is not going anywhere prices are just stabilizing from the all-time highs seen in the last few years. There is also another trend rising which is PRN nursing.

If you want to learn more about travel nursing check out this link: https://cupofnurses.com/becoming-a-travel-nurse-get-to-know-your-dream-job/

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/uWS0r2d1Qsk