Polsky D; Association for Health Services Research. Meeting.
Abstr Book Assoc Health Serv Res Meet. 1997; 14: 216.
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104, USA.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES: To identify trends in job stability for workers employed in the health industry--both for hospital services and non-hospital services--and to relate these industry-specific trends to economy-wide trends in job stability. STUDY DESIGN: Synthetic cohort analysis of the Tenure Supplements of the Current Population Survey (CPS). These surveys, which sample over 50,000 workers representative of the United States working population and have been administered in 1983, 1987, 1991, and 1995, contain data on length of employment with the same employer. From this data I estimate, for the spans 1983-1991 and 1987-1995, the probability of retaining one's current job for 8 years, 8-year retention rates. Comparisons of trends in retention rates over time were made between the health industry and United States labor market average. Trends in retention rates and rentention rate levels between the hospital service sector and non-hospital service sector of the health industry were also compared. Adjustments were made to remove business cycle effects. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For a worker in the health industry in 1983 there was a 38% probability of remaining with the same employer over the next 8 years while in 1987 that probability dropped to 35%. These probabilities, or retention rates, for the entire United States labor market dropped from 37% to 34%. The retention rates for hospital workers dropped from 41% to 39% and for non-hospital medical service workers the drop was from 34% to 32%. The drop in retention rates between 1983-1991 and 1987-1995 for each of these worker types is statistically significant at the 10% level. Parenthetically, the share of health industry's employment in the non-hospital sector increased from 43% to 53% between 1983 and 1995. CONCLUSIONS: Jobs have become moderately less stable in the health industry which is consistant with economy-wide trends. Workers in hospital and non-hospital jobs both faced a 2 percentage point decline in their probability of remaining on their job for 8 years. Given the finding that hospital jobs are more stable than non-hospital jobs and the trend toward relatively more health employment occuring in the non-hospital medical service setting, the industry-wide drop in stability (3 percentage points) is more extreme than if the mix between hospital and non-hospital jobs remained constant. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE AND POLICY: Two key attributes of a job are its wage and its duration. While wage trends in the industry are closely monitored, duration and job stability are often ignored. As health care shifts away from the hospital setting, a growing proportion of health jobs will be in an environment with much lower job stability. If this shift continues without an improvement in job stability in the non-hospital health care environment, job stability in the health industry could become worse relative to the economy as a whole. If this does occur, jobs in the health care industry would become relatively less desirable.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Cohort Studies
- Data Collection
- Delivery of Health Care
- Employment
- Health Care Sector
- Health Occupations
- Industry
- Occupations
- Population
- Salaries and Fringe Benefits
- United States
- economics
- methods
- hsrmtgs
Other ID:
UI: 102233722
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