Tracking nurses in the labour market
– A quantitative and qualitative study of job opportunities for and retention of nurses

By Torben Pilegaard Jensen, Christina Holm-Petersen and Britt Østergaard Larsen, May 2009, AKF 

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Summary 

Background to and structure of the study

Today there is a shortage of skilled employees in many parts of the public-sector labour market. In the social and health sector there are many vacant positions, and the problem is expected to intensify. The shortage of nurses has been evident for some years. The purpose of this study has been to provide information about the extent and nature of nurses' mobility and mobility incentives in the labour market, focusing on how nurses move between jobs in the various areas of the public and private sectors and their motives for moving on.

The study is founded on an extensive register-based analysis of mobility among nurses. This is the point of departure for the qualitative analysis, which comprises interviews with nurses in the most mobile groups.

Findings

Relatively few (2.7%) nurses change from the public to the private sector compared with the public-sector labour market overall, where 4.5% of all employees migrate to the private sector every year.

Relatively many nurses return to public-sector employment, and net migration from the public to the private sector for the period 2000-2006 was only just over 2,500 nurses, although the figure was rising in the latter part of the period.

Annual gross pay does not influence the decision to migrate, but it looks as if the hourly pay increases by an average of 24% for selected groups of nurses. In this way, some nurses achieve the same annual gross pay, but with fewer working hours. Reducing mobility between the public and private sectors will not in itself resolve the expected future nursing shortfall in the public sector. In this context the keys are educating more nurses, providing continuing and further education, and planning and managing work to ensure focus on core nursing tasks.In a labour market offering many options, some nurses choose to seek new challenges, but working conditions, organisational complexity and management are important in terms of retaining staff.Nurses shifting from public-sector hospital employment to private-sector employment find that their work with patients at the public hospitals was very meaningful, but they were dissatisfied with the activities taking place around them in the organisation as such.

It will be a challenge to ensure that professional development becomes a more integral part of the work in hospitals.

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