10. Louisiana — 8,400 open RN roles
Louisiana opens the countdown with one of the deepest RN gaps in the Southeast. State workforce data tracked by the Louisiana State Board of Nursing shows roughly 8,400 open RN roles statewide in 2026, concentrated in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and rural parishes along the Mississippi River corridor.
The driver is a mix of an older workforce, hurricane-related population shifts, and slower nursing school output than the state can absorb. Rural hospitals in particular report vacancy rates near 15 percent, forcing heavy reliance on travel contracts and sign-on bonuses to stabilize units.
Typical Louisiana RN pay sits around $70K to $82K per BLS OES data, but hospitals in shortage parishes are offering sign-on bonuses in the $8K to $15K range. Nurses moving from lower-demand states often stack a relocation package on top, which changes the year-one math considerably.
