May 6, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Health employment not as strong as
it used to be
Until the late 1990s, health employment had been a growing
share of the private economy. While health services remains among the small group of
industries that add large numbers of workers almost every month, employment growth has
slowed recently.
[Chart data—TXT]
Although managed care and other cost control strategies were in place by 1992, the
impact on employment was limited in that year. Since then, employment growth in health
services has slowed. This is in sharp contrast to an acceleration of employment growth
among many other services industries.
As the growth rate of health care expenditures has slowed, so has growth in health
services employment. Managed care and strong competition have caused a restructuring of
the health industry. These changes led to a reduction in inpatient hospital stays and
resulted in sharply slower growth of hospital employment. The average annual rate of
growth in hospital jobs was 3.6 percent from 1987 to 1992; from 1992 to 1997 it was 0.6
percent.
These industry employment data are a product of the Current
Employment Statistics program. For more information see "Health services industry: still a job
machine?" Monthly Labor Review, March 1999.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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