Dire economic predictions aside, California soon may be the place to go for job-seeking nurses. According to the results of a recent study by the nonprofit California Institute for Nursing and Health Care (CINHC), the state received an overall grade of D for its ratio of working RNs to population size. In other words, there just aren’t enough nurses to go around.

Where have all the nurses gone? Oh, they’re out there. They just aren’t working. Not yet, anyway.

Ask any Californian, or indeed any American struggling to find a job, why the situation is so dismal, and the answer will be the same: the sluggish employment market. But recent reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are providing reasons for new-found optimism—hiring rates have been on the upswing and the labor market has been improving, with the health care industry leading the way.

RN hiring expected to pick up
No matter how you look at it, that’s good news for qualified RNs and nursing school graduates. Once the job market starts to rebound, experts are saying it shouldn’t take long for California’s hospitals and clinics to address their flagging nursing employment numbers.

“When the economy improves, they’re going to need nurses again,” said Karen Roberts, director of nursing at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, in a recent Fresno Bee article. Fresno has been one of the hardest-hit metropolitan areas in terms of the employment and housing markets. It received an F on the CINHC’s report card, with only 450.4 working registered nurses per 100,000 people.

What does it take to get top marks? The national average is 860 RNs per 100,000 people; that represents a C grade. To get an A grade, a region would need to have 1,257 or more RN jobs per 100,000 residents.

California’s dismal grades
California did not fare well at all. Over half of the 23 California regions earned D or F grades; the highest grade earned was a C+, in San Francisco/San Mateo/Redwood City. The average statewide was 644 nurses per 100,000. Only three other states received Ds: Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Forty states and the District of Columbia received at least a C.

With California hospitals eager to comply with mandatory nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, and with a generation of older nurses poised for retirement, any upswing in the economy could mean good news for new nurses and soon-to-be nursing school graduates.

“This study supports the need to maintain capacity in nursing schools as a high priority,” said Deloras Jones, RN, MSN, who’s executive director of the CINHC, in a press release.

In other words, when the job listings materialize, there’s going to be a fleet of nurses ready to go to work—a hopeful scenario indeed.