One in seven new nurses graduating in Canada this year will not be able to find work, according to a new study.
The report, by the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), says 8,000 nurses will graduate but 15 per cent of them won't be able to find secure employment.
The CNA says the problem is resulting in 10 per cent of new graduates moving to the United States every year.
The unemployment figure is determined by looking at health-care policy studies, past trends and reports from young nursing students across the country.
"We're concerned that those connections between employers and new graduates are not being made and that new nurses aren't being facilitated into the kinds of jobs that we know are available in Canada," CNA President Marlene Smadu told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.
According to the CNA, Canadian governments spend an average of $60,000 over four years to train a nurse. If 1,200 of them are unable to find work ever year, that amounts to a waste of $72 million in tax dollars.
Despite the lack of jobs available, the CNA says nursing levels are still about 20 per cent below what is required to meet current needs. The result is excessive overtime demands and the cancellation of medical procedures because of a lack of staff.
Smadu said that employed registered nurses are working the equivalent of 10,000 full-time jobs in overtime.
"We know that 8,000 isn't even meeting that gap and that's why to us it's really very shocking that we have new graduates who still don't have full-time employment when they graduate," she said.
"We predict at the association that we need about 12,000 graduates a year to deal with the impending retirement of registered nurses."
The CNA says the gap between supply and demand for people in their profession is expected to jump to 78,000 in 2011 and 113,000 in 2016, according to The Globe and Mail.
The Canadian Healthcare Association (CHA) told The Globe that there are vacant nursing positions in almost every region across Canada.
CHA president Sharon Sholzberg-Gray said the gap may exist because of where the jobs are and where the nurses are.
"That's why we think it's really important to have a pan-Canadian health human resource strategy that would include nursing and recruitment issues and retention issues," she said.
Ontario's health minister announced Wednesday that 1,200 new full-time registered nursing positions are being added to the long-term care sector in Ontario.
