The Global Nursing Shortage: New 2025 Migration Trends and Hiring Policies

The world’s healthcare systems are under increasing pressure. Despite a steady output of new graduates in many countries, demand for nurses continues to outpace supply. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global nursing workforce is growing — but serious inequities remain, especially between high‑income and low‑income countries.

In response, many countries are turning to international recruitment, new visa policies, and strategic hiring to fill their workforce gaps. Here’s how things stand in 2025 — and what’s changing.

🌍 Rising Reliance on Foreign‑Trained Nurses

• In many high‑ and middle‑income countries, a substantial portion of the nursing workforce is now foreign‑trained. According to the latest report by the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development (OECD), between 2010 and 2023 the number of foreign‑trained nurses across OECD countries rose by 69%, reaching over 800,000 globally.
• In certain countries — including the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, Switzerland, New Zealand, and others — foreign-trained nurses now account for a major share of workforce growth.
• This shift is not limited to Europe: demand from many Western countries, Canada, Australia and others is also high — especially among nurses from countries with surplus graduates, such as India and the Philippines.

In short: international migration of nurses is no longer an exception — it’s a central pillar of how many health systems meet demand.

📈 2025 Trends: Incentives, Visa Changes, and Relaxed Recruitment Norms

Due to global shortages, many destination countries are adapting their immigration and hiring policies to attract nurses. Some recent trends:

• Several countries have relaxed visa and immigration requirements for foreign-trained nurses. For example, many high‑income nations now offer easier visa pathways, bridging programmes, and sometimes even permanent residency or citizenship as part of recruitment packages. This makes healthcare jobs abroad more attractive.
• A number of European countries — for instance, Italy — have launched ambitious foreign hiring plans. Italy expects its foreign nurse workforce to reach 50,000 by early 2025 to fill an estimated shortfall of tens of thousands of nurses.
• Countries frequently target origin nations with large numbers of nurses, such as India, the Philippines, and others, offering competitive pay and streamlined migration processes.
• Some governments and employers offer additional incentives: language training, relocation support, bridging courses to meet local licensing standards, and in many cases higher salaries or benefits compared to home countries.

These changes reflect how acute the shortage has become — and how aggressively countries are competing for nursing talent.

⚠️ Ethical & Global Health Implications

The surge in international nursing migration raises serious ethical and equity concerns:

• According to the International Council of Nurses (ICN), aggressive recruitment from low‑ and lower‑middle-income countries — which often themselves suffer from healthcare staffing gaps — risks depleting their already fragile health systems.
• The 2023 revision of the WHO’s Global Code of Practice emphasises that recruitment from “countries facing the greatest workforce pressures” should be avoided — or at least managed only under ethical frameworks with compensatory measures.
• Migration patterns increasingly resemble “carousel” systems: some nurses migrate to one country, then use that as a stepping‑stone to move to another — in search of better pay, conditions, or immigration status.
• This trend can widen global health inequities: while wealthy nations shore up their workforce, poorer nations lose crucial medical personnel, exacerbating shortages at home.

In other words: while migration helps address nurse shortages in wealthy countries — it also risks undermining health systems in less‑resourced ones.

🔮 What’s Ahead — and What Nurses Should Know

As we move further into 2025 and beyond:

• Demand for foreign-trained nurses is likely to increase, especially as populations age and healthcare needs grow in many countries.
• Visa regimes and immigration policies will probably evolve — many nations may continue to expand work‑visa quotas, ease licensing requirements, or offer residency incentives.
• Ethical recruitment — with fair compensation, support, and protections for migrant nurses — will become more important. Source countries, global health organisations, and destination countries will face pressure to balance workforce needs with equity.
• For individual nurses, this landscape means greater opportunity — but also important considerations: licensing equivalency, language requirements, potential for “stepping-stone” migration, and the long‑term consequences for their home health systems.

✍️ Conclusion

The global nursing shortage in 2025 is not just a numbers problem — it’s reshaping international migration, immigration policies, and global health equity. Countries like Italy, Germany, the UK, and others are increasingly depending on foreign‑trained nurses to fill critical gaps. While this offers opportunities for many individual nurses, it also raises difficult ethical questions for global health: is this mass migration the right way to fix staffing shortages — or just an unfair shift of burden from poorer to richer nations?

Good recruitment policy in 2025 must walk a tightrope: balancing urgent demand with ethical responsibility. If you like — I can also pull up 2025 data by country: a table showing top 10 countries recruiting foreign nurses + their visa policies & incentives. Want me to build that table now?