Data:
BLS; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios Sep 9, 2019
The health care
industry added almost 24,000 jobs in August,
helping to buoy overall employment growth amid economic fears associated with
the U.S.-China trade war.
The big
picture: Almost 1 out of every 9 Americans works in health care, and the
industry has not seen a net loss of new jobs in any month since January 2014.
But everyone's insurance premiums and tax dollars are funding this swelling
workforce.
Between the
lines: More than half of all health care job additions occurred in ambulatory
settings, like doctors' offices, outpatient centers and home health agencies.
- Home
health aides, in particular, are in high demand as a graying population
chooses to get more care at home.
But the work is strenuous and does not pay well.
- Hospitals
remain a major source of employment and have not cut the net number of
jobs since November 2017. Hospitals still crave admissions,
and are hiring people to fill roles in some of their empire-building projects.
The bottom
line: Health economist Uwe Reinhardt famously said,
"Every dollar of health spending = someone else's dollar of health care
income." A consistently growing workforce means it'll be that much more
difficult to control the country's ballooning health care
spending.
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