Characterizing the Travel Nurse Market During Covid-19: A Tale of Two Markets for Interchangeable Labor
The Covid-19 pandemic produced a significant shock to US hospitals from 2020 to 2023. Increased and unexpected patient demand for hospital services resulting from Covid-19 and the reduced demand for other non-Covid-19 services due to shutdowns and infection risk resulted in variable elevated demand for registered nurses (RNs). Hospitals have long leveraged a dual market system for RN labor to reduce total labor costs by tapping into the contingent labor market via staffing agencies during times of increased patient demand for services or reduced availability of full-time staff. Covid-19 created a natural experiment through which to study the contingent labor market, and, with the emergence of online travel nurse staffing marketplaces, the data is available for that purpose. This paper uses US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Covid-19 data, Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and online travel nurse marketplace data to characterize the contingent RN labor market during Covid-19, to theorize the interplay between these dual markets, and to introduce the value of travel nurse marketplace data. This analysis demonstrates a clear temporal correlation between Covid-19 hospitalizations (i.e., patient demand for hospital services) and wages in the contingent RN labor market, details the trends in contingent RN labor market wages from 2019 to 2023, demonstrates RN specialty-level wage variation that correlates with patient demand for certain hospital service lines, and discusses the interplay between the full-time staff RN market and the contingent market from 2019 to 2023.
