Hiring in Outpatient Clinics Froze Last Month

Hiring in health care continued its moderate pace in October. As noted in September, the rapid hiring in the health sector, especially in outpatient services, has slowed dramatically. Health care hired about 25,000 workers in October, increasing employment by 0.17 percent. Non-farm payrolls, excluding health care increased 0.15 percent. So, job growth in health care has settled down to a rate similar to the overall economy.

However, hospitals have picked up their hiring, adding 7,000 workers for growth of 0.13 percent, as shown in table 1. Hospital hiring had lagged other health hiring for months. Home health added a lot of employees, while nursing homes actually shed jobs. Ambulatory clinics froze hiring in October.

Over the last twelve months, as shown in table 2, employment growth in health care (1.63 percent) lagged nonfarm hiring, excluding health care (1.96 percent). Outpatient clinics’ payroll increased by 4.56 percent.

I would like to think that health care has cut back the pace of hiring because facilities are no longer convinced that Obamacare will bring them a gusher of new revenue. However, that is still to be determined. Certainly, publicly traded hospitals and clinics have credited Obamacare for their improved results lately.

Convenient, retail clinics, which we have supported, have hired lots of people. Hopefully, these and other outpatient facilities are just taking a breather to manage their growth responsibly, and not losing market share to more expensive hospitals.

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