Nursing has been named the most popular career change in the UK, with a particular uplift in searches made during the pandemic, new data show.
The research comes from eLearning provider DeltaNet International, who analysed a list of the top 50 careers to uncover patterns in people switching jobs and their careers of choice.
The nursing sector could see a surge in new entrants as the research showed more than 70,000 searches have been made for ‘retrain as a nurse’, ‘train as a nurse’ and ‘how to become a nurse’ so far this year.
The data shows a 89% increase in searches relating to retraining as a nurse over the past five years, and a 60% increase over the past year alone, possibly due to the importance of nurses’ role during the pandemic.
This is compared to just a 27% increase in searches for ‘retrain as an accountant’ and a 12% increase in searches for ‘retrain as a teacher’ in 2021 compared with 2020.
DeltaNet also looked at search data to discover the most popular careers overall in the UK for 2021 so far. Teaching came in as the number one career choice with 303,680 average monthly searches. In second place was personal training with 276,170 searches and nursing in third place with 72,830 monthly searches in the UK.
