Nurses per 1,000 People: Switzerland Tops, but Pay Lags

Switzerland has more practising nurses per person than any other OECD country: 18.8 per 1,000 people in 2023, against an OECD average of 9.2.¹² It also pays its hospital nurses less than the average Swiss worker earns. Their pay is 0.85 times the national average wage, the lowest ratio in the OECD's comparison.³

Both numbers come from the same OECD report, Health at a Glance 2025. Put side by side, they show that countries with many nurses do not necessarily pay them well relative to everyone else. This article sets the two measures against each other and explains what each one does and does not show.

Two measures, side by side

The OECD calls the pay ratio "remuneration of hospital nurses" relative to "the average wage of all employees".⁴

Sources: OECD Health at a Glance 2025, figures 8.13 and 8.15.²³

How many nurses each country has

The OECD counted 9.2 practising nurses per 1,000 people on average in 2023, up from 8.1 in 2013.¹ Switzerland, Norway and Iceland had more than 15. Colombia, Türkiye and Mexico had 3 or fewer.¹

A second dataset agrees on Switzerland. The World Bank's series, which counts nurses and midwives together, puts Switzerland at 18.8 per 1,000 in 2022.⁵ That series draws partly on OECD data, so it is not fully independent.

The count is not of identical workers. In Switzerland, between a third and a half of nurses are "associate professional" nurses, with lower qualifications than fully trained ones.¹ The OECD says much of Switzerland's growth over the past decade came from this group. Their numbers rose by over 50%, against 20% for professional nurses.¹

How nurses are paid against everyone else

On average, hospital nurses in the OECD earned more than the average worker in 2023. The report's text says 20% more.⁴ Its data file gives an average ratio of 1.17, or 17% more, across the 33 countries with data.³ The difference is between the report's own text and its data, and we report both.

Four countries were below 1.0: Switzerland, the UK, Finland and Italy.⁴ In Mexico, Poland, Chile and Czechia, nurses earned at least 50% more than the average worker.⁴

The UK figure carries a warning. The OECD notes that alternative data sources for the UK suggest nurses earn above the national average, not below.⁴ The OECD's UK figure covers only nurses in the National Health Service.³

Do more nurses mean lower relative pay?

Across the 35 countries with both measures, the two run weakly in opposite directions. Countries with more nurses per person tend to have lower pay ratios. By our calculation, the rank correlation is −0.37.²³ That is a pattern, not a rule.

There are clear exceptions. Luxembourg has 14.2 nurses per 1,000 and a pay ratio of 1.40.²³ Türkiye has 2.9 nurses per 1,000 and a ratio of 0.96.²³

Where the nurses come from

Switzerland fills part of its workforce from abroad. In 2023, 26.6% of its nurses had trained in another country, up from 14.7% in 2010.⁶ The OECD reports that foreign-trained nurses made up 58% of Switzerland's growth in nurse numbers between 2010 and 2023.⁷ In the UK, that share was 83%.⁷

Swiss voters have acted on nursing before. In November 2021, 61% voted for the "Pflegeinitiative", a popular initiative to make nursing more attractive.⁸ Its backers, the national nurses' association, said Switzerland trained only about half of the 4,700 nurses it needed each year.⁸

In England's NHS, the Nuffield Trust found that nurses' average earnings fell 10.7% in real terms over the 14 years to March 2025.⁹ Average private sector earnings rose 3.3% over the same period.⁹

What the headline numbers leave out

A ratio is relative. Switzerland's 0.85 compares nurses with high Swiss wages. In US dollars adjusted for living costs, Swiss nurses earned about $69,600, above the OECD average of about $60,800.³ Mexico's high ratio sits on the lowest dollar figure in the table.

Not every country counts the same nurses. Pay data cover only registered nurses in Canada, Chile, Ireland and the US, which pushes those figures up.⁴ Greece counts only hospital nurses.¹ Overtime and informal payments are often left out.⁴

The years differ. Some countries' pay data are from 2021, 2022 or 2024.³

A correlation is not a cause. The data do not show that low relative pay produces more nurses, or the reverse.

How to read a "nurse shortage" figure

When a report says a country is short of nurses, check which measure it uses. Nurses per 1,000 people says how many there are. Pay against the average wage says how the job compares with other work at home. Pay at purchasing power says how it compares with the same job abroad.

Then check who is counted. A high count that includes many lower-qualified nurses is not the same as a high count of fully trained ones.

For other workforce gaps, see our comparison of the geriatrician shortage in the US, UK and Canada. For why country rankings disagree, see why Ireland ranks 6th or 66th.