Isabel Mills will qualify as a nurse in October after studying at City St George’s, University of London for the past three years, but she has been unable to find a nursing job in the capital.
Mills, from Welling in south-east London, has spent the past couple of months applying for jobs and said she was increasingly concerned by the lack of entry-level opportunities.
“If I search in London, a lot of the jobs are Band 8 which is for managers,” she said. “There aren’t many options unless you want to move out of London.”
NHS Vacancy statistics show that as of March 2026, the Registered Nursing staff group had a vacancy rate of 5%, with 21,643 vacancies.
New nurses typically apply for entry-level Band 5 positions, but statistics show that the number of those jobs has been falling, particularly in London.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to the NHS Business Services Authority found advertised Band 5 nursing roles in London fell from 4,762 in 2019-20 to 1,533 in 2024-25, a decline of 67.8%.
Mills said: “The majority of the Band 5 jobs are up north, which is obviously OK if you want to relocate, but you’ve trained in London… you don’t then want to have to go to another area.”
