BSN and MSN Nursing Grads Finding Jobs Faster than Average

Nursing graduates with bachelor’s or master’s degrees are finding jobs soon after they graduate, according to a recent survey by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).

The survey was conducted in August 2013 among deans and directors from U.S. nursing schools offering entry-level baccalaureate and graduate programs. Here are some of the survey’s key findings: 

• At the time of graduation, 59 percent of new Bachelor of Nursing Science (BSN) graduates had job offers. Four to six months after graduation, 89 percent of new BSN grads had secured a job in nursing.
• Graduates with a Master of Nursing Science (MSN) had even greater success finding employment. Data showed that 67 percent of MSN graduates had jobs at graduation, while 90 percent had jobs four to six months after graduation.
• Based on the responses, 43.7% of hospitals and other healthcare settings are requiring new hires to have a bachelor’s degree in nursing (up 4.6 percentage points since 2012), while 78.6% of employers are expressing a strong preference for BSN program graduates.

Compared to the national average, nurses are finding jobs much quicker than graduates in many other fields. Just 29.3 percent of the country’s new graduates across all disciplines had job offers at graduation, according to a similar study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

The AACN survey indicated new graduates in the South and Midwest were able to find nursing jobs faster than those in the Northeast and West. The percentage of BSN graduates with job offers at graduation were 68% in the South, 59% in the Midwest, 50% in the Northeast, and 47% in the West. At four to six months after graduation, that job offer rate rose to 93% in the South, 90% in the Midwest, and 82% in the Northeast and West.