The increase in the last two years coincides with a rise in the demand for hospital services, said Peter McMenamin, PhD, a senior policy adviser for the American Nurses Association. As and more people have access to healthcare as a result of federal insurance reform, the need for healthcare services will continue to increase through 2024, according to the BLS. These are some of the reasons the is projecting the nursing employment rate will grow 16% from 2014 to 2024 — much faster than the average for all occupations.

“There are more opportunities than ever for nurses right now,” said Mary Jane Randazzo, MSN, RN, a nurse recruiter at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia. “Hospitals are creating roles for nurses in areas such as transplant coordination, urgent care, ambulatory care, clinical documentation and care coordination.”

The BLS also predicts the financial pressures on hospitals to discharge patients quickly will result in more admissions to long-term care facilities, outpatient care centers and home health care. “I’m seeing significant growth in home health, case management, hospice, and health plan assessment nursing positions,” said Mary S. McCarthy, RN, assistant vice president of human resources at MJHS in New York.

According to a recent report from Medscape, the average gross salary of an RN in 2015 was $79,000, compared to $95,000 for a clinical nurse specialist and $102,000 for a nurse practitioner. The specific averages vary depending on geographic region, and the report showed that RNs in California earned the highest annual salary with an average of $105,000, followed by the Northeast at $87,000. RNs who live in the Southeast and North Central earn the lowest annual salaries at $74,000 and $69,000 respectively.

Although the salaries are higher in California and the Northeast, the cost of living in these regions is the highest in the country, according to 2016 data from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. The two states with higher paying nursing jobs combined with a lower cost of living are Michigan and Idaho, according to data from Drexel University in Philadelphia. According to the BLS, command the highest median annual wages, followed by general medical and surgical hospitals, then home healthcare services, offices of physicians and skilled nursing facilities. Certified registered nurse anesthetists, nurse researchers, mental health nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives are the four specialties with the highest salaries, according to NurseJournal.org. In the academic arena, faculty salaries increased about 8% between 2011 and 2015, according to data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. In 2015 the mean full-time salary of an assistant professor in the U.S. was $70,000; an associate professor was $83,000 and a professor was $108,000, according to the AACN.

The Medscape report also showed how increases in pay were correlated to educational levels. Nurses who had completed an RN diploma or associate’s degree program earned an average of $73,000 per year, while nurses with a BSN earned $79,000. Nurses who had earned a master’s degree averaged $87,000 per year, and those with a doctoral degree earned about $96,000 per year.

As analysts like McMenamin look ahead, one of the salient demands in the future will most likely be for highly experienced nurses, he said. According to the BLS, nearly 700,000 nurses are expected to retire between 2014 and 2024. While there has been a surge of new graduates entering the workforce, there will not be enough highly experienced nurses in their 40s and 50s to step into the roles of retiring nurses, he said.

“There may be bidding wars for these nurses, and the wages for more senior nurses could increase while very experienced nurses remain in short supply,” McMenamin said.

According to the Medscape report, 69% of advanced practice nurses and 49% of RNs received an education allowance or tuition reimbursement in 2015. Nearly 40% of APRNs and 55% of RNs received certification fee reimbursement that year.

“Jobs are not lifetime jobs anymore,” McCarthy said. “There is a lot of movement, and you do not have to leave the company to do this. I see a significant amount of internal movement. There are so many different fields within the nursing borders, and you can spend an entire career in nursing and barely touch a fraction of what is available.”