ALBANY – It’s a good time to go into nursing.

Southern Tier hospitals and health care providers currently have a nursing vacancy rate of more than 7 percent and could need as many as 5,000 additional nurses over the next 10 years in order to fill the void.

Central New York faces the highest nursing shortage in the state with a 14.7 rate. Statewide, the vacancy rate is 8.6 percent.

New York Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand released those statistics in a conference call to reporters yesterday. She said it’ll take about 105,000 additional nurses to meet New York’s health care needs over the next decade.

“We can’t fix health care in the country if we don’t address America’s nursing shortage,” the Senator said.