More men are entering nursing as workforce demand grows
Men were 12.6% of U.S. registered nurses in 2023 as the profession paid $82,141 on average and is set to grow 6% through 2033.
Men still made up just 12.6% of registered nurses in 2023, but the share has risen as nursing offers a clearer path to a steady paycheck than many other careers. Registered nurses earned an average yearly wage of $82,141 in 2024, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects RN jobs will grow 6% from 2023 to 2033, faster than the average for all occupations.
That combination of pay and job security matters in a profession that remains the nation’s largest health care occupation. The Health Resources and Services Administration’s 2022 snapshot of the registered nurse workforce put the number of actively licensed RNs at about 4.3 million, with roughly 3.5 million working as nurses. Even in that vast labor pool, men remain a small minority, though some recent summaries put their share at about 13% in 2024.
The pull is not just economic. Nursing offers a degree-to-job pipeline that is unusually direct: earn the credential, pass licensing requirements, and enter a field where demand stays high across hospitals, clinics and long-term care. In the South and other regions, sustained recruitment efforts have helped expand the pipeline for men who once would have looked elsewhere for stable middle-class work.
That push is partly a correction to history. Nursing was once a male-dominated field, but from the early 1900s until the mid-1950s men were marginalized and excluded from military nursing, a long exclusion that helped cement the idea of nursing as women’s work. The American Association for Men in Nursing traces its origins to 1971, when Dennis Martin formed a group of like-minded men in Michigan to create a support network and encourage more men to enter the profession.
The recruitment campaign has moved beyond rhetoric. The American Association for Men in Nursing’s Best Schools recognition included the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing in 2024, one sign that nursing schools are competing to show male applicants they are welcome. At the same time, the trend is not one-way: the 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey found the proportion of male nurses declined slightly after years of growth.
That dip does not erase the larger labor-market picture. Nursing is still drawing men because it combines relative wage stability, visible job openings and a credential that leads directly to work. The bigger question is whether the rise in male nurses can help ease a workforce crunch that remains large enough to pull in any qualified recruit, regardless of gender.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
