Health Care is a Hot-Bed for Employment

Some very interesting statistics were recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF) for the health care industry’s first 3 months in 2016.  

These statistics show that the health care industry is on pace to break 2015’s number of jobs created in the economy.  In 2015, the health care industry added 438,800 jobs.  In only the first 3 months of 2016, the industry has already created 118,000 jobs!  Newly created health care jobs also account for 1 out of 6 total jobs that were created last month in the entire U.S. economy

Another interesting statistic is that the new jobs created in the health care industry reside predominantly on the outpatient/ambulatory side vs. hospital-based. These statistics support the continued trend towards outpatient/ambulatory care in efforts to continue to lower costs, reduce admissions and readmissions to hospitals, etc.   

Breaking it down further, 27,400 jobs created last month alone were for positions at physician practices, ambulatory centers and outpatient centers. Of those 27,400 jobs created last month, 35% of those were created at home health agencies (both skilled and unskilled home health care).

It is also worthy to note that while the job boom was not as prevalent in hospital settings, hospitals in the U.S. still added 10,200 jobs in the month of March alone. Also, hospital payrolls have increased, even amidst the continued hospital/hospital system consolidation in the past 12 months.  

The sector within the health care industry where we did not see growth was in the residential care facilities (nursing homes, etc.). This sector actually experienced a reduction in jobs; about an 800 job reduction.