The June jobs report released on Friday came in better than expected, showing nonfarm payrolls added 206,000 jobs, beating economists’ expectations of 190,000. The health care sector emerged as a strong performer in the report, adding 49,000 jobs in June alone.
Yahoo Finance health reporter Anjalee Khemlani breaks down the huge job growth in the healthcare industry and some of the biggest pressures it faces in retaining employees.
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Video Transcript
The health care sector added 49,000 jobs in June, down from the 68,000 added in July.
Did you know that our senior health care reporter, Angeli Cani, has been digging into the numbers, Angeli?
So, Brian, of course, we know that health care employment has grown pretty rapidly in recent months.
But we’re now seeing an average monthly decline of 64,000, with 22,000 jobs added in health care, outpatient health services, and 22,000 jobs added in hospitals.
These are key areas of employment that have been added in recent months.
I’ve been looking into what’s happened over the past year.
We’ve seen these damaging figures every month for the past year since last April.
And the story behind this is that high turnover within the industry is one of the drivers of job growth — an imbalance of supply and demand between where the jobs are and where the jobs are being applied for.
Payment pressures from insurance companies will result in lower payments, putting some strain on hospitals and the health system.
Meanwhile, facilities experiencing burnout are seeing rising costs.
So, it’s a really bad cycle right now for the medical field.
This may be why you see some variation.
We also see a shift in direction for doctors and healthcare workers, perhaps towards telehealth and other areas that offer better work-life balance.
So all of this has an impact on how the numbers change from month to month.
Historically, we’ve seen a slight dip this month after record numbers, but it will definitely be interesting to see how this plays out over the rest of the year.
Okay, Angeli, thank you for keeping a close eye on the medical field.