Health systems are underestimating how many workers plan to leave, Harris Poll finds

Fifty-nine percent of U.S. healthcare workers say they are likely to look for job openings, interview for or switch to a new role in the next year, according to the 2026 Healthcare Workforce Barometer released Wednesday by The Harris Poll. Employers surveyed for the same report estimated that 39% of their employees would.

Forty-two percent of workers said they are likely to look outside their organization, against an employer estimate of 32%. Forty percent of employers said they believe their employees are very loyal; 41% of employees said they are.

The Harris Poll surveyed 1,514 full-time healthcare employees in direct patient care roles and 304 healthcare employers at the director level or higher between June 12 and July 1, 2026. Physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants account for roughly 40% of the employee sample.

Last year’s report put the share of workers looking to move at 55%, a change the 2026 report describes as directional. The release also cites a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projection of a shortage of nearly 500,000 critical healthcare workers by 2038.

The retention math

Ninety-seven percent of employers called retaining healthcare employees a high or medium organizational priority. Eighty-nine percent said they prioritize career growth and advancement opportunities, down seven points from 2025, and 86% said they prioritize retaining seasoned workers, down nine points.

Asked why employees leave, 51% of employers named burnout and emotional fatigue, a 15-point increase from last year. Forty-seven percent pointed to a lack of opportunities for career advancement, professional development or education.

“Only in healthcare would we be sprinting to innovate while we’re still recovering,” Kevin Beiner, chief operating officer of Northwell Health, said during the Chief Healthcare Executive Roundtable in July.

“For us, it took five years to recover from COVID with respect to turnover and vacancy rates. Five years is a very long time, and it’s all the modalities that we’ve described, but it’s also culture, and culture is not a passive thing. Culture requires a lot of investment.”

Labor costs are rising at the same time, he says. “You see unions negotiating pay increases from between five and 7%, sometimes more, and that hides the fact that the benefit costs are skyrocketing.”

In the same roundtable discussion, Benjamin P. Levy, M.D., clinical director of medical oncology at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, said that, “retention is a challenge right now — not only for physicians, but for nurses and … for research staff, too.”

Levy added that “finding coordinators and people who can do the budgets and research nurses is incredibly challenging right now, and they’re the engine for our research.”

What the youngest workers want

Seventy percent of Gen Z workers said they expect to look for a new role in the next year, compared with 64% of millennials, 49% of Gen X and 31% of baby boomers. Forty-six percent of employers named younger or early-career workers as the hardest group to retain, and 76% agreed that younger employees are less likely to commit to a long-term career within one organization.

Sixty-five percent of Gen Z respondents said they expect to stay with one employer for five or more years, close to the 72% all-generation figure, and 95% said job stability and long-term security matter to them.

Eighty-nine percent said clear opportunities to move up are important, against 84% of millennials, 72% of Gen X and 56% of boomers. Seventy-one percent said the speed of career progression is important, compared with 61% of Gen X and 44% of boomers. Eighty-eight percent of employers agreed that early-career workers expect faster returns from education investments.

“Younger healthcare workers are willing to move on if their employer doesn’t support their career trajectory,” Adele Webb, healthcare workforce advisor for Workforce Edge, said in a news release.

A trust gap on career growth

Eighty percent of employees said clear opportunities for advancement are important to them, and 68% said the speed of career progression matters. Twenty-six percent said they have a great deal of trust that their employer will support their long-term career growth. Twenty-four percent trust their employer a great deal to act in employees’ best interests, and 23% to be a partner in advancing their careers.

“The disconnect between what healthcare workers value and what they believe their employers will provide is striking,” Jennifer Musil, global president of research at The Harris Poll, said in the release. “Employees are looking for opportunities to grow and advance, and employers themselves recognize that a lack of those opportunities can drive people to leave.”

On education benefits, the part of the survey closest to the sponsor’s line of business, 90% of employers said the benefits affect their ability to compete for talent, and 89% of those offering them said they see better retention and career mobility among employees who use them.

Sixty-four percent measure the return using retention rates. Fifty-two percent view workforce education as a strategic investment, and 48% said they have a comprehensive workforce education strategy.

Seventy-seven percent of employers said they offer education benefits and estimated 69% of employees know about them. Fifty-eight percent of employees said their employer offers them. Employers estimated that 44% of eligible employees use the benefits.

AI: Cooler on both sides

Seventy-nine percent of employers said it is critical for employees to learn AI skills to stay competitive, down 10 points from 89% in 2025. The share who said employers have a responsibility to equip employees with AI skills fell 11 points, to 78%.

Forty-eight percent of workers said they are comfortable using AI-based tools in their current role, up seven points directionally, and 39% said AI has had no noticeable impact on their work.

Sixty-six percent said healthcare workers are less at risk of being replaced by AI than workers in other industries. Forty-five percent said they trust AI to provide meaningful benefits to patients.

Seventy percent of employers said they believe employees trust the organization’s implementation of AI. Fifty-two percent of employees said they trust their employer at least somewhat to implement AI responsibly.

“We’ve started to think about re-skilling parts of our workforce to really meet the innovation as it comes to fruition,” Robert Garrett, FACHE, CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health, said during the roundtable. “So we actually have a task force that started to think about what that looks like, and I think again that will be helpful with retention of our team members. I don’t think of AI as replacing people’s jobs, but I think certainly some jobs will be re-skilled as a result of AI becoming more prevalent.”

“You’re going to deal with a generation of people who are not just used to dealing with it, but they will expect to deal with it,” Beiner says. “And the more that the evidence suggests or proves that AI-partnered care is better care, it’s not going to be a question of do we trust, do we want to be there. It’s going to be we’re going to have no choice but to be there.”

Ninety-one percent of workers surveyed said they are proud to work in healthcare, and 76% said the reality of the work is not accurately portrayed in the media or public discourse.