About 15 per cent of graduates from Canadian nursing schools in 2007 will be unable to find work, the Canadian Nurses Association said Wednesday as it called for more full-time jobs to be created.

If the pattern of recent years holds true, nearly 10 per cent of about 8,000 graduates will move to the United States for work, the group said.

And if those 1,200 graduates are unable to find work in Canada, taxpayers will lose out on the $72 million that was invested on the nursing education, the association's president, Marlene Smadu, said in a release.

She cited the association estimates it costs taxpayers between $40,000 and $50,000 to educate a nurse.

"Given emergency department closures, surgery cancellations and growing wait times, coupled with the looming retirement of a large proportion of nurses, Canada cannot afford to lose one — let alone 1,200 — nurse graduates who are skilled professionals and devoted caregivers," Smadu said.

The unemployment projection was based on health-care policy studies, past trends and reports from nursing students from across the country.

The association also pointed out that only slightly more than half of registered nurses in Canada have full-time jobs — about 54 per cent in 2005, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

The profession is also aging, the association warned. Currently, almost one in five nurses is older than 55, and the average age is at its highest recorded level, 45.

Yet even as the graduates struggle to find work, positions are popping up in some areas of the country.

In February, the Calgary Health Region announced a major overseas recruitment campaign, saying they needed hundreds of nurses and ads in Canada hadn't lured enough applicants.

On Wednesday, the Ontario government announced it was adding 1,200 new full-time registered nursing positions in long-term care, at a cost of $57.7 million annually.

Ontario has also guaranteed 7.5 months of full-time employment to its nursing graduates.