Healthcare hiring may save the US economy
Dave Pearson
November 27, 2023
If the country avoids slipping into an economic recession over the next few months or even years, it could have the healthcare job market to thank.
The case can be made by the numbers. In the six-month period ending with October, healthcare jobs comprised only 11% of total U.S. employment—but supplied 30% of the uptick in new hires.
The figures are from the Labor Department as reported in The Wall Street Journal Nov. 26.
Healthcare “could serve as a strong job generator for years to come as an aging population and COVID-19 fuel widespread worker shortages and greater needs for healthcare services,” write WSJ economics reporters Gwynn Guilford and Gabriel Rubin.
Other illustrative statistics from the article:
Healthcare payrolls rose at a 4.2% annualized rate in the three months through October, up from a 3.1% pace in the first quarter.
Employment outside of healthcare grew at a 1.3% rate in the three months through October, down from 2.4% in the first quarter.
The U.S. economy added approximately 150,000 jobs in October, and almost all of them were in either healthcare, government or leisure/hospitality. Absent those three sectors, the economy would have had zero net job growth.
