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States with the most, fewest licensed nurses

08/13/2025|Mariah Taylor|
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The National Council of State Boards of Nursing found Washington, D.C., has the most licensed nurses per capita, while Utah is the state with the fewest.

The organization created a comprehensive course of nursing licensure statistics in the U.S. and its territories. The data was compiled using the NCSBN’s database and Nursys, an electronic information system, whenever regulatory bodies entered licensure data. Of the council’s 58 members, 57 shared licensure data. The data included 6,870,362 registered and practical nurse licenses.

The data found Wyoming and Vermont had the fewest licensed nurses in their states overall, at 9,440 and 12,957, respectively. Meanwhile, California and Texas had the most licensed nurses at 578,043 and 526,812, respectively.

Becker’s used the latest Census data to calculate how many nurses are in each state per 100,000 population. Here are the 10 with the most and fewest nurses.

Most

  1. District of Columbia — 7,056.03
  2. New York — 2,975.79
  3. Alaska — 2,955.82
  4. Minnesota — 2,706.14
  5. Massachusetts — 2,621.15
  6. Connecticut — 2,582.89
  7. North Dakota — 2,568.64
  8. Montana — 2,476.54
  9. Ohio — 2,464.33
  10. Delaware – 2,447.63

Fewest

  1. Utah — 1,377.44
  2. California — 1,465.95
  3. Louisiana — 1,480.92
  4. Washington — 1,496.81
  5. Georgia — 1,563.81
  6. Wyoming — 1,606.49
  7. Maryland — 1,638.90
  8. Arizona — 1,650.34
  9. Texas — 1,683.60
  10. Virginia — 1,698.94
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