Nursing Home Occupancy Rate: 2026 Benchmarks

US nursing homes were 80.5% full on an average day, by our calculation from the August 2026 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services provider file: 1,258,146 residents per day in 1,563,603 certified beds.

Put the other way, roughly one certified bed in five sits empty on a typical day. For an industry whose costs are largely fixed by the building and the staffing it requires, that empty fifth is the difference between a viable home and a struggling one.

Nursing Care Facilities, Skilled Nursing Facilities (NAICS 623110) comprises establishments primarily engaged in providing inpatient nursing and rehabilitative services, generally for an extended period, to individuals requiring nursing care. Census sets one defining test: these establishments have a permanent core staff of registered or licensed practical nurses who, with other staff, provide nursing and continuous personal care.

That test, permanent licensed nursing staff on site, is what separates this industry from the ones next to it, and the separation is not obvious from the signage. Census places convalescent homes, rest homes with nursing care and inpatient hospices inside this industry. It also places assisted living facilities for the elderly inside it, but only where nursing care is provided.

Residential facilities serving people with intellectual, developmental or mental health disabilities are classified elsewhere again, even where some nursing is present, because the primary purpose of the establishment differs from medical nursing care.

For each certified home, CMS reports the number of certified beds and the average number of residents per day. The national rate divides total residents by total beds across the 14,628 homes that report both. The median is taken across homes, each counted once.

The middle half of homes run between 72.7% and 92.7% occupancy. A home inside that band is ordinary; one below it is carrying a meaningful share of empty capacity.

Three limits travel with the measure and they are the source's own. It is built on certified beds rather than licensed or staffed beds, so a home that has taken a wing out of service still carries those beds in the denominator. It is an average daily census over a reporting period, not a point-in-time count, which smooths short stays. And it covers only certified homes, so the private-pay end of the industry is absent by construction.

A nursing home's costs are set mostly by its licensed beds and the staffing rules that come with them, while its revenue arrives per resident per day. Each empty bed carries its share of fixed cost with nothing coming in against it.

That is why occupancy and staff turnover are the two operating numbers that decide most outcomes in this industry: one sets revenue against a fixed base, the other drives the largest variable cost.

The relationship is not linear either. Below a certain census a home still has to run a full nursing shift, so the marginal empty bed costs the operator almost its full share of overhead. Above that point each additional resident arrives against a cost base that has already been paid for, which is why occupancy improvements compound in a way that rate increases do not.

Anyone planning to open or buy capacity should read this alongside the economics of the adjacent industries, since the boundary described above also decides which staffing rules apply. Our guide to starting an assisted living facility covers the neighbouring case.