The nation’s deep recession is helping to alleviate the decade-long nursing shortage, as workers who had left the field in better times are returning in droves…according to The Wall Street Journal.

Nearly a quarter-million nurses entered the work force in 2007-08, an 18% surge that was the largest two-year increase in at least three decades, according to a study being released Friday in the journal Health Affairs.

Many nurses who had left the field have re-entered the work force to compensate for a spouse’s lost income or health benefits, the study said. About half the increase over the period came from nurses over age 50. And in 2008, there were a third more working nurses ages 21-34 with children under 6 than in the previous year.

“This surge of employment is basically knocking out the shortage,” said Peter Buerhaus, the study’s lead author and a professor at Vanderbilt University’s school of nursing in Nashville, Tenn. The gain of 243,000 hospital nurses in the period is particularly remarkable at a time when the U.S. economy has shed more than six million jobs, helping solidify the profession’s “recession-proof” image…Continue reading at WSJ.com