| |
|
|
Theme: Health Human Resources
Project 2-4: Labour force participation of
nurses.
Project Lead:
Marko Vujicic
Synopsis of Project:
Project 2-1 can only employ nurse-specific variables available in the nursing registration databases. Accordingly, it excludes individual wage information. Project 2-4 will address this omission through the use of Census data.
Vujicic and Evans have examined trends in the labour market for registered nurses in Canada during the hospital downsizing period (1992-1997). Results indicate that nursing employment levels in hospitals decreased during the hospital cut-backs with the decrease accounted for entirely by the cohort of nurses under 30. Their work employed census data; they found that the reduced hospital employment level among young nurses was driven almost entirely by a large increase in the proportion of individuals under 30 who were trained as nurses but who were working outside of the health sector. In 1996 there were over 15,000 young individuals trained as nurses but working in non-health care occupations. It seems unlikely that these young nurses were leaving the health care sector voluntarily for better job opportunities in non-nursing occupations, since the census data revealed that, for young individuals with a nursing education, working as a nurse was associated with a very large wage premium (25-30%) relative to the non-health care sector.
|
|
