Registered Nurse

Also known as: Nurse, RN

Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.

This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:

1

IowaNursing

2

Ohio StateNursing

3

UW-MadisonNursing

4

IUNursing

5

PittNursing

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AI assists nursing rather than replacing it. Ambient documentation captures patient encounters, predictive monitoring flags deterioration, and triage protocols handle routing — automating roughly 10-18% of an RN's shift currently spent on non-nursing tasks (AHA 2025; AMIA 2025). Anthropic's 2026 Labor Market Report puts RN AI exposure at 26% but actual automation risk at just 12%, because the core work — IV starts, wound care, physical assessment, family communication, end-of-life support — has to be done by a human at the bedside. The rubric anchors a "2 Low" at exactly this pattern: AI assists, demand absorbs the gains. Demand structurally exceeds supply. BLS projects 5% RN growth through 2034 with ~189,100 openings per year, HRSA projects roughly a 10% national RN shortage through 2027 (24% in non-metro areas), and over 1M RNs are expected to retire by 2030. Hospitals added 163,000 positions in 2025; the layoff activity that did hit healthcare concentrated on administrative staff and CNAs, not bedside RNs. The era of $30K new-grad sign-on bonuses has cooled and residency programs are more competitive, so entry-level isn't frictionless — but it isn't tightening the way it is in white-collar fields where AI does meaningful core work. The watch item is multi-year: if AI keeps clawing back nurse time from charting and monitoring, the patient-per-RN ratio can climb, which would convert productivity gains into modest headcount restraint over a decade. For someone starting a BSN today, that's a tailwind, not a threat — the shortage absorbs everything AI can plausibly automate at the bedside in the foreseeable horizon.

Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.