Hospitals Dominate Health Jobs In November

The November Employment Situation Summary came in as expected, with 211,000 nonfarm civilian jobs added. Last month’s report was dominated by health jobs, which was not the case today. The increase of 24,000 health jobs comprised only 11 percent of the payroll hike, and both health and non-health jobs rose by 15 percent on the month (Table I).

However, hospital jobs, which increased 13,000, comprised over half the growth in health jobs. This is something we view with concern. We prefer to see health jobs grow in ambulatory settings, because hospitals are the most expensive location of care. Hopefully, technology will move more health services out of the hospitals.

Over the last twelve months, on the other hand, we still see disproportionately high health job growth as a share of total nonfarm civilian payroll growth (Table II). Further, hospital job growth only accounted for a little over one third of health jobs growth. Although that is a relatively good development, these job figures give no confidence that productivity is increasing, especially in light of last year’s jump in health spending.

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