Health Jobs Double Growth in Jobs Report

Last Friday’s employment report was greeting as good news, with 280,000 jobs added in May. Health hiring doubled its April pace, adding 47,000 jobs (versus only 22,000 in the previous report), comprising about one of six nonfarm jobs. At a seasonally adjusted growth rate of 0.31 percent, health jobs are still growing faster than non-health jobs (0.18 percent).

As shown in Table 1, job growth continues to be concentrated in ambulatory settings, while nursing and residential care facilities added few jobs.

Year-on-year growth is similar, as shown in Table 2, with jobs in ambulatory settings comprising two-thirds of health jobs, and jobs in nursing facilities effectively frozen. Health jobs grew at 2.79 percent versus 2.18 percent for non-health jobs.

Technical note: In case it is not clear, these are jobs in health services, not in producers such as pharmaceutical or medical-device companies.