Dive Brief:
- The healthcare sector grew by 474,700 jobs in 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revealed last week. That beats the combined growth of 2013, which saw 159,700 jobs added, and 2014, which added 309,000 jobs.
- The average monthly growth in 2015 was 40,000 healthcare jobs, compared to 2014 monthly growth of 26,000 jobs.
- In December 2015 specifically, BLS noted healthcare grew by 39,400 jobs while overall U.S. employment grew by 292,000 jobs that month.
Dive Insight:
While rapid healthcare job growth may appear to be good news for the industry and the economy overall, it may not be so simple. As noted in a New England Journal of Medicine paper by Katherine Baicker, PhD, and Amitabh Chandra, PhD in 2012, as healthcare was still in a steady growth mode despite higher general unemployment amid the recession, "The challenge is that it's easy to count jobs but much, much harder to figure out who paid for them and whether those resources could have been put to better use."
They suggested the improvement of health and economic well-being do not necessarily go hand in hand with rising healthcare employment, and that any additional spending on salaries should be commensurate with additional health improvements in order to be socially beneficial.
According to BLS, recent healthcare job growth was led by ambulatory healthcare services with 23,400 jobs in December 2015. Of those, 12,300 were at hospitals and the others at physician offices, outpatient care centers and home healthcare services.