Meet the job market.  You get everyone presuming that a certain area is hot and the buzz people should go into it.  So, people are told there is a MASSIVE nursing shortage and that there is a need for nurses, so go and be a nurse.  Well...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/nursing-jobs-new-grads/index.html?iid=HP_LN&hpt=hp_t2

It's a problem well documented by the nursing industry. About 43% of newly licensed RNs still do not have jobs within 18 months after graduation, according to asurvey conducted by the American Society of Registered Nurses.

do not have jobs within 18 months after graduation, according to a survey conducted by the American Society of Registered Nurses.

"The process has become more and more discouraging, especially since hospitals want RNs with experience, yet nobody is willing to give us this experience," saidRonak Soliemannjad, 26, who has been searching for a nursing job since she graduated in June.

Apparently the new economy today may have a large demand for nurses, but over 40% of those graduating as nurses can't get hired.  Go figure...

Usually by the time you hear about it, it's too late. See: all those people buying gold from Goldline.

damn, there goes my b plan

im doing my masters right now in MBA after i got my bachelors in nursing... yeah im doing my plan b

Read the entire article, Richard.

It states that they aren't finding employment because the hospitals are demanding tons of work experience, rather than hire new nurses. That'd make it seem like hospitals are being very self-defeating in that there is a nurse shortage, but they don't want to take on new nurses.. Maybe its because they can't vet so many newbies. Who knows.

id venture it's because evry college and startup now offers nursing degrees, and not enough nurses are being trained properly. This is the same with many industries.

This is a problem endemic to the entire hiring market. Everyone complains that they can't find good help. No-one is willing to *make* good help.

Even if i weren't someone whose life was directly effected by this mentality, you would figure something's gotta give somewhere.

not sure about that. well, i have 2 friends who are nurses. they change jobs every 4 months or so because at any given time they have 2 offers and they keep getting better and better deals. seems like a lot of demand here in chicago.

Foot in the door is the hardest step in any career. This certainly isn't exclusive to nursing...

I'd describe it as a problem that more and more industries have no interest investing in people. Rather than train and retain people with the right skills, they demand the prospective employee have the exact skills they need. Of course, nobody comes out of school with 5 years of workplace experience in just the right subject, so they create their own unsolvable labour shortage.

I can see the point. What company would want to invest thousands of dollars training an asset that can walk out the door whenever it likes? But for decades corporations have been undermining employee loyalty by demanding more unpaid overtime, cracking down on labour groups, and laying off staff at a whim. Of course good people are hard to retain! You can't expect any loyalty when you don't show any loyalty yourself.

Schools aren't going to fix this problem, because they can't possibly know the labour market's needs better than the labour market itself does. At this point the labour market will either have to suffer chronic shortages of key labour, or learn to take the risk of training the skills they need (and there may be clever ways of mitigating that risk).