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How many nurses are there in New Zealand?

73,577

The number of professionally active nurses reported to the OECD was 73,577 (OECD, 2025).

Updated

The number of nurses in New Zealand and nurses per 1,000 people, as reported to the OECD: professionally active nurses (from 1990) and nurses licensed to practise (from 2005).

Licensed to practise counts everyone holding a practising certificate (85,462 in 2025, matching the Nursing Council); professionally active is narrower. Never compare one measure with the other. These are workforce counts, not hires or Health NZ employees; year-on-year change is net of people leaving.

A percentage meeting a health target describes the group covered by that target. Its definition tells you which patients are counted and when their waiting clock starts and ends.

Read the period beside each number before comparing it with another figure. A monthly observation, a quarterly result and a financial year cover different spans of time. The latest release can also revise earlier observations. The chart and downloads keep the published periods so you can check which figures are being compared. A change in nurses describes what happened during that period; it does not by itself explain why it happened or identify the effect of a government policy. Definitions and coverage matter as much as the size of a change.

Professionally active nurses was 69,153 in 2024, a year earlier.

The earliest observation on the same basis was 31,255 in 1990.

Nurses: definitions

The number of nurses in New Zealand and nurses per 1,000 people, as reported to the OECD: professionally active nurses (from 1990) and nurses licensed to practise (from 2005).

  • Licensed to practise counts everyone holding a practising certificate (85,462 in 2025, matching the Nursing Council); professionally active is narrower. Never compare one measure with the other.
  • These are workforce counts, not hires or Health NZ employees; year-on-year change is net of people leaving.
Professionally active nurses. Professionally active nurses, 1990 to 2025, latest 73,577.020,00040,00060,00080,00019902025
Show the figures
PeriodProfessionally active nurses (number)
202573,577
202469,153
202363,645
202262,162
202159,648
202057,677
201954,512
201853,595
201752,255
201651,607
201550,495
201448,916
201347,993
201247,428
201147,345
201047,384
200944,578
200844,762
200741,913
200639,854
Full data: nurses nz
Professionally active nurses. Professionally active nurses: 73,577 in 2025.

Years as labelled by the OECD (usually calendar years; some countries report financial years). Source: OECD. Lines break at basis changes and missing periods.

Full chart, data table and downloads

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Nurses: questions for your AI

Download the data, attach it in your assistant, then paste the prompt.

The attached CSV is Nurses in New Zealand, from OECD. Answer: How many nurses are there in New Zealand? Name the unit and period. Use only directly supported observations. Definitions: The number of nurses in New Zealand and nurses per 1,000 people, as reported to the OECD: professionally active nurses (from 1990) and nurses licensed to practise (from 2005). Limits: Licensed to practise counts everyone holding a practising certificate (85,462 in 2025, matching the Nursing Council); professionally active is narrower. Never compare one measure with the other. These are workforce counts, not hires or Health NZ employees; year-on-year change is net of people leaving.

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More questions about nurses

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Nurses: sources

The source publication, licence and snapshot used to build this page.

Organisation
OECD, Health workforce: nurses
Licence
OECD Terms and Conditions (Data), reuse including commercial with citation. OECD (2026), Health workforce: nurses, OECD Data Explorer, https://data-explorer.oecd.org/ (accessed on 10 October 2026). Figures selected and transformed by NZ in Numbers. Anyone reusing these figures must keep this OECD citation.
Reuse limits
Some OECD datasets include third-party material with its own terms; check the OECD terms page before monetising.
Snapshot
data/raw/oecd-nurses/2026-10-10_bc9f7ed033da.csv
SHA256
bc9f7ed033dad8f001ceedccb68c817e0038c478cd93cb73cccfb3d5f81a17e4
Retrieved
10 October 2026