Dive Brief:
- With Baby Boomers aging and retiring in a great wave, we should see millions of new jobs in the healthcare industry.
- The Bureau Of Labor Statistics projects that altogether the healthcare sector will grow at a 2.6% annual rate until 2022 and will be responsible for about 5 million of the 15.6 million new jobs that will be created during that period, FierceHealthFinance reports.
- About half of the U.S.'s fastest-growing job categories will include home health aides, occupational therapy assistants and physician assistants; medical billers and coders, nurses, chief medical officers and chief informatics officers are among the most in-demand current jobs.
Dive Insight:
While the article doesn't bring this up, it's worth noting that we're not just short on assistants or C-suite executives, we are also likely to run short on primary care doctors, particularly geriatricians. As the wave of Baby Boomers hits the primary care offices of the US, many experts warn, it could become hard for them to get medical appointments promptly. This is a problem we should be planning for well in advance, especially the geriatrician shortage. There's no excuse for growing old to become a reason for having trouble accessing healthcare in the U.S.