By Harriet Torry

Nursing is a high-demand field with strong job security, attracting more men due to its stability and earning potential.

The number of male registered nurses has tripled since the early 2000s, with men often entering the field after military service or exposure to nursing through other roles.

Nursing offers a wide range of opportunities and compensation levels, with men gravitating towards higher-paying specialties like nurse anesthetist.

Brandon Holcombe went straight from high school to working as a welder in northern Georgia, but it wasn’t for him.

Holcombe worried that the field was being automated away by robots, and besides, he wanted something with more problem-solving skills. Now, a decade later and at 28 years old, Holcombe is a long way from welding, studying at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing to become a registered nurse.

“Each day brings new learning opportunities,” Holcombe said.

The number of men in the U.S. with the job of registered nurse has nearly tripled since the early 2000s. Many come to the field after working in the military or in jobs, such as paramedics or firefighters, that exposed them to the work of nurses.

“What I hear a lot from female students is, ‘I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, I like helping people,’ where the men tend to look more at job security and job stability,” said Jason Mott, president of a men's nursing association.

Many of the manufacturing jobs that are being moved overseas, replaced by automation or phased out of the American economy were mostly filled by men. As a result, other occupations traditionally dominated by women are now gaining a larger share of men, including elementary and middle-school teachers and customer-service representatives.

Still, nursing is a relative outperformer in the proportion of men joining what has long been considered a “pink collar” sector. The number of male registered nurses has increased from about 140,000 in 2000 to about 400,000 in 2023. This means that about 14% of nurses are now men, up from about 9% roughly two decades ago.

Economists at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth found that men who were becoming registered nurses tended to do so in their late 20s or early 30s rather than as their first job.

When Holcombe left welding, he trained to become an emergency medical technician, then a paramedic. His parents had never finished high school, and college wasn’t something he had ever really considered—until his partner on paramedic helicopter flights, himself a nurse, encouraged Holcombe to go.

Now, in addition to classes, Holcombe spends several days a week at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Sometimes when he enters a room with a female physician, patients assume he is the doctor. When that happens, “I try to stay quiet,” he said.

Since the pandemic, the number of workers in healthcare has increased at roughly twice the pace of overall job growth, according to Labor Department data. In the healthcare and social-assistance sector, which includes home-care aides, there are about two open positions for every unemployed person in the U.S.

Eligible nurses, like those working in certain rural areas, can get help with their student debt from state and federal programs.

The job isn’t for the faint of heart, though. Nurses deal with life and death every day. The early months of the pandemic were frightening and exhausting. And hospitals can’t close for holidays or let half their employees work from home on Fridays.

The job of registered nurse—what patients tend to think of when they hear the word “nurse”—usually requires a bachelor’s degree. The average pay is about $95,000 a year, compared with the average nationwide salary of about $65,000.

Nursing also includes a range of titles and compensation levels, and men tend to gravitate to those that pay the most.

About 46% of nurse anesthetists, who administer anesthesia and help patients recover from it, are men. The job currently requires at least a master’s degree, and the average salary is $214,000.

At the other end, only about 10% of certified nursing assistants are men. It is one of the lowest-paid nursing positions, with an average salary of $38,000 a year.

Tony Rychlowski was 18 when an older cousin, who was finishing his training to become a doctor, recommended that the teenager consider becoming a nurse anesthetist.

Rychlowski, 29, had always played high-impact sports, such as football, dirt-bike riding and wrestling, so he was already handy at patching up himself or his friends with a first-aid kit. Nursing brought a bonus too: Rychlowski met his wife, Kaitlyn Rychlowski, now a psychiatric nurse practitioner, while studying nursing as an undergrad.

Rychlowski works independently at a rural hospital. He interviews patients before surgeries, examines their medical records, provides them with anesthesia, monitors their vitals during their procedures, and then afterward removes their breathing devices and sends them off to a recovery unit with a registered nurse. Most of the surgeries are scheduled, but there are emergency cases too.

For Rychlowski, the best part of each shift is the ability to be with people through their lowest moments—and their highest. “From the moment that a baby’s born,” he said, “to Grandma taking her dying breath.”

Michael Williams also got directed into nursing at a young age. In high school, he was considering going into physical therapy or becoming a doctor when a female cousin who was working as a nurse encouraged him to consider the same.

Williams, 38, started nursing school at the University of Tampa not long after the movie “Meet the Parents” came out. It starred Ben Stiller as a male nurse whose future father-in-law derides his career choice. Williams, as a result, got some good-natured teasing from friends. At the time, it was hard for him to even find nursing scrubs that didn’t look like a blouse.

Williams, now a nurse practitioner with a doctorate, works for a health-insurance company doing wellness exams at patients’ homes in and around Austin, Texas. Many are older adults with chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.

He loves that nursing offers so many different opportunities, but he has seen colleagues burn out because of the stress and hours. “This is hard work,” Williams said, “and on anyone’s journey it requires a bit of sacrifice.”