Health care outpaces overall economy in adding jobs

The medical industry is the only bright spark in an otherwise dismal job picture, according to a pair of reports issued at the end of August and the beginning of September.

The monthly employment situation report issued Sept. 2 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that no jobs were added to the economy as a whole, and the unemployment rate hung at 9.1%, raising concerns of another recession (link).

Health care was the only major sector to create jobs, with 29,700 added in August. A total of 18,100 of these were created in ambulatory health care, with 5,600 in physician offices. Another 7,700 were added to hospital payrolls.

The health care sector added an average of 25,000 jobs per month in 2011. Physician offices created a mean of 5,000 monthly, and hospitals produced about 6,400.

A counting of online help wanted advertisements also indicated that hiring was soft in most of the economy, although health care continued to be a source of new positions.

According to the monthly Conference Board Health Wanted OnLine report issued Aug. 31, the total number of job ads declined 163,900 in August to 3,990,600. Listings for health care practitioners and technicians, a category that includes physicians, was the one major classification to show growth.

That grew 26,300 to 513,700 in August, primarily because of increased demand for registered nurses, speech-language pathologists, license practical and vocational nurses, family and general physicians and occupational therapists (link).

Researchers suggest that this may be a result of pent-up demand, because health care ads experienced increases in the first couple months of the year and then went down. The number of listings for health care and technical jobs declined 61,200 to 487,500 in July. There was another decrease of 16,500 ads in June and 3,400 in May.