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INDUSTRY PROFILE: If you really want to understand what makes the U.S. economy tick these days, don't go to Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Washington. Just take a short trip to your local hospital. Park where you don't block the ambulances, and watch the unending flow of doctors, nurses, technicians, and support personnel. Then, you’ll have a front-row seat at the health-care economy. Health care will generate 3 million new wage and salary jobs between 2006 and 2016, more than any other industry. Seven of the twenty fastest growing occupations are health care related. Job opportunities are expected to be above-average in all employment settings. The healthcare sector continues to be one of the few job growth areas in the sluggish economy in 2009.
As the largest industry in 2006, health care provided 14 million jobs—13.6 million jobs for wage and salary workers. Of the 13.6 million wage and salary jobs, 40 percent were in hospitals; another 21 percent were in nursing and residential care facilities; and 16 percent were in offices of physicians. Among the jobs with the fastest growth: home health aides, medical assistants, diagnostic medical sonographers, radiographers, and personal and home care aides.
Wage and salary employment in the health care industry is projected to increase 22 percent through 2016, compared with 11 percent for all industries combined. Employment growth is expected to account for about 3 million new wage and salary jobs—20 percent of all wage and salary jobs added to the economy over the 2006-2016 periods. Projected rates of employment growth for the various segments of the industry range from 13 percent in hospitals, to 55 percent in the home health care services.
Health-care hiring is providing a safety net in areas where manufacturing and retailing are no longer dependable sources of jobs. Even more promising, health care has taken over the role manufacturing used to play in providing opportunities for less skilled workers to move up. (More than 50% of workers in nursing and residential care centers have a high school diploma or less, as do a quarter of workers in hospitals.) |
