Nurses per 100,000 Inhabitants in Europe by Country (2024)
Practising nurses per 100,000 inhabitants across 30 European countries in 2024: 1,524 in Norway against 106 in Romania, the widest spread in Europe's health workforce data. Eurostat figures.
Data
| # | Country | per 100,000 inhabitants | Change vs 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | 1,524 | -33 |
| 2 | Luxembourg | 1,472 | +6 |
| 3 | Ireland | 1,419 | +53 |
| 4 | Finland | 1,290 | +15 |
| 5 | Germany | 1,251 | +27 |
| 6 | Switzerland | 1,215 | +12 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 1,123 | +10 |
| 8 | Sweden | 1,114 | +14 |
| 9 | Denmark | 1,053 | +6 |
| 10 | Iceland | 1,032 | +36 |
| 11 | Austria | 1,015 | -15 |
| 12 | Czechia | 799 | +7 |
| 13 | Malta | 797 | +51 |
| 14 | Lithuania | 770 | +22 |
| 15 | Liechtenstein | 737 | +37 |
| 16 | Portugal | 721 | +29 |
| 17 | Serbia | 711 | +10 |
| 18 | Italy | 692 | +9 |
| 19 | Estonia | 683 | +19 |
| 20 | Poland | 601 | +12 |
| 21 | Spain | 573 | -15 |
| 22 | Slovenia | 521 | +11 |
| 23 | Cyprus | 519 | -2 |
| 24 | Hungary | 460 | +9 |
| 25 | Bulgaria | 441 | -2 |
| 26 | Latvia | 414 | -1 |
| 27 | Croatia | 265 | +13 |
| 28 | Greece | 248 | +7 |
| 29 | Montenegro | 122 | +2 |
| 30 | Romania | 106 | +6 |
About this Dataset
Norway employs 1,524 practising nurses per 100,000 inhabitants; Romania employs 106. A ratio of 14 to one makes this the widest spread in Europe's health workforce statistics by a distance — physician density across the same countries varies by about two to one.
Nurse density measures how much labour a health system actually buys. Doctor numbers are constrained by training pipelines and professional regulation; nurse numbers are a budget line, reset every year.
Norway, Luxembourg, Ireland and Finland lead, all at 1,290 per 100,000 or above, and all of them are systems where a large publicly funded long-term care sector employs nurses at scale. Romania, Montenegro, Greece and Croatia report 265 or fewer, against a panel average of 799 and a median of 729. Greece is the entry that matters most when the health workforce tables are read together: 28th of 30 here at 248, and first in Europe on practising physicians. A system can be doctor-rich and nurse-poor, and the tasks nurses perform elsewhere then fall to doctors, to auxiliary staff, or to families.
Part of the bottom of this table is definitional rather than real. Eurostat's series admits more than one qualification concept, and a country reporting only the narrowest professional category records a lower density than one that includes nursing associate professionals or midwives. That caveat is worth some hundreds of nurses per 100,000 at the margin. It does not close a 14-to-one ratio, and it does not explain why nurses trained in the lower-ranked countries so consistently end up practising in the higher-ranked ones.
Every row is the figure published for 2024; no value is carried over from an adjacent year to fill a gap. Belgium and France have not published a 2024 figure and are left out rather than carried forward from an older year. The chart tracks a fixed panel of 24 countries: those reporting in every year from 2009. The line therefore moves because the countries moved, not because the sample changed. Figures count practising nurses under Eurostat HLTH_RS_PRS2, expressed per 100,000 inhabitants. Countries differ in whether they report practising, professionally active or licensed staff and in which nursing categories they include, so the lower end of the range is somewhat overstated.
Country pages: Norway · Luxembourg · Ireland · Finland · Germany · Switzerland · Netherlands · Sweden · Denmark · Iceland · Austria · Czechia · Malta · Lithuania · Liechtenstein · Portugal · Serbia · Italy · Estonia · Poland · Spain · Slovenia · Cyprus · Hungary · Bulgaria · Latvia · Croatia · Greece · Montenegro · Romania