Healthcare Talent Attraction Prices Just Hit an All-Time High

This week's edition was written by Mona Tawakali, Chief Strategy Officer at Talivity.

Healthcare talent attraction costs, what employers pay to attract talent and get applicants via digital advertising, are now 75% above their 2021 baseline, the highest point on record. This isn't a pandemic-era spike. It's a structural shift, and it's not reversing anytime soon.

Here's what the data shows, and what it means for your hiring strategy.

The numbers:

• 1.75x: The Healthcare Talent Market Index (price of talent attraction) hit an all-time high in May 2026, tracking market prices paid to attract talent via digital advertising (2021 = 1.0 baseline).

• +29%: The 2024 annual average TMI, marking the point talent attraction prices crossed baseline and kept climbing.

• +33K/month: Average healthcare job growth in 2025. April 2026 came in even higher, at +37K.

• +680K: Healthcare jobs added in the last 12 months (Mar '25 to Mar '26), making it the fastest-growing sector in the country at 2.9% YoY.

Why it's happening:

Three forces are compounding at once. Immigration policy, including a new $100K H-1B visa fee, is raising costs, especially in rural markets that lean on international talent. Legislation aimed at expanding the nursing pipeline (like the FAAN Act) is years away from easing 2026 to 2027 demand. And labor activism is on the rise, with Q1 strikes in NYC and California pushing safe staffing ratios and wages to the forefront, and total employment costs higher.

The part most leaders miss: timing matters.

Our data shows Q4 prices (October to November) run 15 to 20% above summer lows, every single year. Building a pipeline earlier in the year, before the seasonal spike, can meaningfully lower cost-per-applicant, but only if you can keep that pipeline engaged until you're ready to hire.

Want a market-specific read on your hiring costs?

Talivity's Healthcare Division will run a free custom cost-per-applicant and channel analysis for your role mix and your geographies. Get in touch.

Where the pressure concentrates:

Not all roles feel this evenly, and ambulatory care is where it shows up first. It leads job growth nearly every month across the entire dataset, making it the highest-competition segment for talent attraction in healthcare right now. Nursing and residential care is trending up too, steadily, driven by aging-population demand, but ambulatory is the one consistently pulling ahead.

That matters for budgeting: organizations with strategies to expand ambulatory and behavioral health services are walking into the tightest labor market in the sector. If your business plan calls for growth in outpatient or behavioral health capacity, your sourcing strategy and budget need to reflect that you're competing in the hardest segment to win talent in, not an average one.

On cost specifically, scarcity shows up fastest in specialty roles: Radiologists ($287 cost-per-application), Nurse Anesthetists ($151), and Neurologists ($120) sit far above the pack. RNs are a different problem entirely. At $20 per application, they're the cheapest role to source, but they eat 28% of healthcare media spend simply because of the volume required.

The takeaway:

Healthcare hiring costs aren't cyclical anymore. They're structural, and the BLS projects this sector to keep growing through 2034. The organizations that get ahead of Q4 pricing, and that budget specialty roles differently than high-volume roles, will spend meaningfully less to hire the same people.

Want to unpack this live? Join our next Talent Market Index webinar on July 16th, where we'll dig into these numbers and more. Save your spot.