Registered Nurse Forecasting

On this Page:

  1. Project Overview
  2. Reports and Presentations
  3. Project Contact
  4. Related Resources

Project Overview

The Office of Economic Advisors is working, along with other Wisconsin Health Workforce Data Collaborative (WHWDC) members, to alleviate the expected health care workforce crisis. The Healthier Wisconsin Partnership Program (HWPP), a part of Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) endowment, awarded a grant to the "Collaborative Response to the Growing Wisconsin Health Workforce Crisis" project. One of this project’s goals calls for the expansion of the existing forecasting tool for registered nurses (RNs) in Wisconsin.

The health care industry needs to be examined because Wisconsin's labor force is facing a great change as the baby-boom population begins to retire. The changes are inevitable, and economists at the Office of Economic Advisors (OEA) within the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) have already examined their effects in a paper, "The Impact of Aging Population on Wisconsin’s Labor Force" (Winters et al.,2009).

As stated in the paper, the effects of the shifting demographics on Wisconsin’s workforce cannot be overstated. However, health care faces a unique set of challenges due to the nature of this industry. Along with decreasing the labor supply, the aging population will increase the demand for health care.

The base models project the supply and demand of registered nurses through 2035 in five year increments. The scenario models allow users to generate their own forecasts by changing supply or demand factors in any combination. Overall, this model provides a new and unique tool that will help Wisconsin policy makers take proactive steps towards determining the gap between nursing supply and demand.

Reports and Presentations

Project Contact

For more information on the Registered Nurse Forecasting project contact:

Related Resources