59% of health care workers plan to look for a new job in the next year, Harris Poll finds

Fifty-nine percent of U.S. health care workers say they are likely to look for job openings, interview for or switch to a new role in the next year, up from 55% in 2025, a change the report describes as directional, according to the 2026 Healthcare Workforce Barometer released Wednesday by The Harris Poll.

Among Gen Z workers, the figure is 70%. Millennials are close behind at 64%, followed by 49% of Gen X and 31% of baby boomers.

The survey was commissioned by Strategic Education, Inc., the parent company of Workforce Edge, which administers employer education benefit programs. Harris polled 1,514 full-time health care employees in direct patient care roles and 304 health care employers at the director level or higher between June 12 and July 1, 2026.

Physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants make up roughly 40% of the employee sample; the rest work in other patient-facing professions.

The release pairs its findings with a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projection of a shortage of nearly 500,000 critical health care workers by 2038, and an HRSA figure that one in three nurses is over the age of 50.

How far off are employers on who wants to leave?

Employers surveyed estimated that 39% of their employees were likely to look for another role in the next year, and 32% to look outside the organization. Employees put those numbers at 59% and 42%.

Forty percent of employers said they believe their employees are very loyal to the organization. Forty-one percent of employees said they feel very loyal to their current employer, and 36% said they feel very valued by it.

“So clinicians have to see more patients than they ever did. Clinicians also have to fill out more paperwork than they ever did, and clinicians are not getting paid any more than they used to,” Sarah Matt, M.D., host of Medical Economics’ Vital Signs, said in an interview with Medical Economics in August.

“If you were in any other business and you had to do a ton more work for not much more, you would probably say, ‘Well, this doesn’t make sense.’ And so now you have nurses, doctors, you name it, that are trying to get into other environments where they work part time, or they work remote as telemedicine or this or that.”

The survey’s employer respondents named burnout and emotional fatigue as the top reason employees leave, at 51%, a 15-point jump from 2025. Forty-seven percent pointed to a lack of opportunities for career advancement, professional development or education.

Richard Anderson, M.D., FACP, chairman and CEO of The Doctors Company and TDC Group, told Medical Economics in February: “We talk a lot about burnout, but we tend to respond to it with almost, you know, nice things, sort of the kumbaya things. Well, let’s have pizza on Friday, or, you know, let’s meet to talk about our issues once a month for a half hour.

“But the cause of burnout is basically the industrialization of medicine. It’s about throughput, and as long as we prioritize throughput over quality of care and the doctor-patient relationship, burnout is not going to get better.”

Is Gen Z less committed, or just less patient?

Seventy-six percent of employers agreed that younger employees are less likely to commit to a long-term career within one organization, and 46% named younger or early-career workers as the group hardest to retain.

Sixty-five percent of the Gen Z respondents said they expect to stay with one employer for five or more years, close to the 72% figure across all generations, and 95% said job stability and long-term security are important to them. Forty-four percent said they feel very loyal to their current employer.

Eighty-nine percent of Gen Z workers said clear opportunities for advancement are important, compared with 84% of millennials, 72% of Gen X and 56% of boomers. Seventy-one percent said the speed of career progression matters, against 61% of Gen X and 44% of boomers. Eighty-six percent said education or learning new skills will help them move up.

“As a nurse and educator of more than 42 years, these findings confirm what I have seen first-hand. Younger healthcare workers are willing to move on if their employer doesn’t support their career trajectory,” Adele Webb, health care workforce advisor for Workforce Edge, said in a news release.

Matt, who teaches first-year medical students at SUNY Upstate Medical University, said the newest entrants arrive ahead of their teachers on the tools.

“It’s the first time in medical history where our earliest students may know more about the tools and technologies that we’re utilizing than the folks that are our senior leaders,” she said.

“So they’re using their tools; it’s native to them. How can we make sure that the way that they’re doing it actually helps them practice medicine? And if the most senior folks in the industry don’t know, then it’s hard for us to guide them.”

Who do workers trust with their careers?

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 career.

On the employer side, 97% called retaining employees a high or medium priority and 89% said they prioritize career growth opportunities, down seven points from last year. Prioritizing the retention of seasoned workers fell nine points, to 86%.

“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.

The Harris data on education benefits, the segment closest to the sponsor’s business, show 75% of workers interested in continuing their education and 81% interested in an employer-sponsored program. Among employers that offer education benefits, 89% said the benefits improve retention and career mobility for those who use them.

Forty-eight percent of employers reported having a comprehensive workforce education strategy.

Forty-nine percent of workers said they would personally contribute up to $500 a year toward additional education, and 7% would put in $2,500 or more. Thirty-nine percent would commit 10 or more hours a week if it led to meaningful advancement; 13% would go past 15 hours.

Has AI changed the job yet?

Forty-eight percent of health care workers said they feel comfortable using AI-based tools in their current role, a seven-point directional increase from 2025. Thirty-nine percent said AI has had no noticeable impact on their work. Among those who have felt an impact, 28% said AI helps them complete tasks more efficiently and 23% said it reduces administrative work.

Sixty-six percent of respondents said health care workers are less at risk of AI replacing their jobs than workers in other industries, which the report contrasts with Pew Research Center data showing 56% of U.S. adults are extremely or very concerned about AI eliminating jobs.

Forty-five percent of workers said they trust AI to provide meaningful benefits to patients. Their leading concerns were loss of human interaction (40%), accuracy and reliability (37%) and data privacy (34%).

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%.

“The biggest place where I’m seeing big impacts is, of course, on the operational side, scheduling, the financials, you name it, and that’s been coming for a long time, whether by rules-based engines or by other mechanisms,” Matt said.

“But from a real clinical perspective, over the last 24 months, we’ve seen ambient listening and documentation AI really take off, and that’s helped a lot of providers in lots of different ways.”

It depends on how the practice works, she said. “Are they now shoving more patients into their schedule, or are they going home early? And I think there’s a difference on revenue generation versus clinician satisfaction on how that impacts people as individuals.”

Robert Wachter, M.D., chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Medical Economics that about 70% of UCSF’s physicians use an AI scribe.

“About 90% of them say, ‘I love it,’” Wachter said. “And we’ve almost gotten to the point where if we turned it off, we might lose a fair number of doctors, or it would be hard to recruit a doctor if we didn’t offer them an AI scribe. It’s almost become sort of an expectation of practice now.”

What keeps people in medicine

Ninety-one percent of respondents said they are proud to be a health care worker, and 77% said health care remains a respected and trusted profession. Seventy-six percent said the reality of the work is not accurately portrayed in the media or public discourse.

“People that go into medicine are still excited to go into medicine,” Matt said. “It’s for lots of different reasons, but healthcare is not a particularly glamorous and luxurious place to go. It is hard work.”