Tag: "economic data"

Health Jobs Growth Doubled in May

This morning’s employment report was greeted as good news, with 280,000 jobs added in May. Health hiring doubled its April pace, adding 47,000 jobs (versus only 22,000 in the previous report), comprising about one of six nonfarm jobs. At a seasonally adjusted growth rate of 0.31 percent, health jobs are still growing faster than non-health jobs (0.18 percent)

As shown in Table 1, job growth continues to be concentrated in ambulatory settings, while nursing and residential care facilities added few jobs.

T1

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Jun 05, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

Health Construction Spending Lags

In response to some comments about the role of health facilities construction in the economy, I’ve decided to add a few lines about today’s construction spending report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Year on year, total construction spending increased by 4.8 percent through April, to just over one trillion dollars, of which about 40 billion dollars (four percent) was health facilities construction. Health construction spending grew only 2.6 percent, much less than all construction and the 9.2 percent growth in nonresidential non-health construction.

$725 billion of the total construction spending was private, of which a little less than half was residential and a little more than half nonresidential. Private health facilities construction accounted for $31 billion, an increase of 7.5 percent, versus 13.9 percent growth in private nonresidential non-health construction. (Private residential construction collapsed over the twelve months.)

$9 billion of government health construction spending comprised 3.24 percent of all government construction spending ($281 billion), and dropped by 11 percent over the twelve months.

Jun 01, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

Health Spending Unscathed In Shrinking Economy

This morning’s terrible revision to first quarter GDP – from an initial estimate of 0.2 percent real growth to a real loss of 0.7 percent – confirms that health spending stands over our weak economy like a colossus.

In the initial estimate, personal consumption spending on health services increased by $23 billion (chained 2009 dollars). Today’s second estimate reports $24.2 billion (Table 3, line 17). So, we can be pretty confident that the folks at the Bureau of Economic Analysis who do this good work have mastered how to measure spending on health services.

This emphasizes how much of our prosperity is being devoured by a health system that is still driving everyone crazy, post-Obamacare. The real drop in GDP was a loss of $30.6 billion.

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May 29, 2015 | 12 comments | by

Health Spending Crushing a Stalled Economy

March’s estimate of last year’s fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) showed that health spending was chewing through a weak economy. Today’s release of the advanced estimate of this year’s first quarter GDP might best be described as health spending crushing a stalled economy.

GDP barely budged, increasing by a trivial 0.2 percent annualized. Although personal consumption expenditures increased at a much higher rate, the largest component of that increase was health services, which contributed 0.62 percent to the change in GDP. (Housing and utilities, at 0.59 percent, was second.) Investment spending and exports were in the tank.

Seasonally adjusted at annual rates, GDP increased by only $6.3 billion from the fourth quarter. Health services consumption, on the other hand, increased by $23 billion. This is a dramatic increase in GDP committed to a government-controlled and relatively unproductive sector of our economy.

Apr 29, 2015 | 2 comments | by

Health Jobs Grow Steadily in Weak Jobs Report

Last Friday’s very weak jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was greeted as bad news, but it disguised more good news for the heath sector: Job growth in March kept its steady pace. Obamacare’s healthcare jobs boost appears to be confirmed from February and January.

Almost one in five of the 126,000 jobs added in March were in health care, as shown in Table 1. Ambulatory facilities continued to add jobs at a faster rate than hospitals, while nursing and residential care facilities lost jobs.

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Apr 07, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

Obamacare Subsidies One Fifth of the Increase in Government Transfer Payments in January

January’s Personal Income and Outlays report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows how significant Obamacare’s subsidies are in the scheme of government transfer payments to households, accounting for 21 percent of the increase in government transfer payments in January:

Personal current transfer receipts increased $24.8 billion in January, compared with an increase of $13.8 billion in December. The January estimates of current transfer receipts reflected several special factors…… Other government social benefits to persons was boosted $5.3 billion, primarily reflecting health insurance premium subsidies paid in the form of tax credits to enrollees of the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

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Mar 03, 2015 | 3 comments | by

Last Week’s GDP Estimate Included a Massive Upward Revision in Health Spending

Due to the Christmas break, we did not discuss last week’s third estimate of 3rd quarter GDP when it was released on December 23. The media noted the big headline jump in the real (inflation-adjusted) increase in GDP, from a 3.9 percent in the second estimate to 5.0 percent in the third estimate.

November’s second estimate of 3rd quarter GDP included moderate health spending growth. The third estimate blows that out of the water. Much of the upward revision to the GDP estimate was due to health spending.

The real dollar change in seasonally adjusted GDP (at annual rates) from the 2nd quarter to the 3rd quarter was estimated at $153.7 billion in the second estimate. The third estimate revised this up to $195.2 billion, a change of $41.5 billion (27 percent).

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Dec 29, 2014 | 4 comments | by

Health Spending Grew 18 Percent Faster Than GDP in Twelve Months

According to the Altarum Institute, health spending rose 4.9 percent in the twelve months through August 2014. In the twelve months to July, it rose 5.1 percent, 18 percent more than the 4.3 percent growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

The health spending share of GDP was 17.4% in July. This is up from 16.0% at the start of the recession in December 2007. This increase is partly attributable to slow GDP growth rather than high health spending growth, as the July 2014 health spending share of potential GDP (PGDP) was 16.7%.

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Oct 17, 2014 | 5 comments | by

Boom! Hospital Revenue Up 5 Percent in Twelve Months

This morning’s Quarterly Services Survey (QSS) released by the Census Bureau reported that hospitals’ revenue rose 4.9 percent from the end of the second quarter in 2013 to the end of the second quarter in 2014. From the first quarter to the second quarter of 2014, it jumped 2.8 percent, overcoming a first quarter drop of minus 0.8 percent. Revenue for ambulatory services rose only 2.4 percent in the same twelve months. It jumped 3.0 percent from the first quarter of 2014, but had dropped 2 percent in the first quarter from the end of 2013.

The QSS surveys a sample of service businesses, and is assuming increasing importance in economic research. It is important because it reveals complementary — and in this case contradictory — data about health spending. As I’ve discussed frequently at this blog, healthcare employment is growing steadily, but not in hospitals. Growth is in the outpatient setting. I had hoped that this indicated that health services were moving out of the high fixed-cost hospital setting and into lower fixed-cost outpatient settings, especially convenient retail clinics.

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Sep 11, 2014 | 7 comments | by

“We Are Trying to Come Up with Theories”: The “Final” First Quarter GDP Estimate May Not Be So Final After All

This blog noted that Obamacare led the Bureau of Economic Analysis to make a seriously flawed estimate of health spending in the first quarter of 2014. Instead of an initial growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and  revised drop of one percent , the “final” estimate was a drop of 2.9 percent annualized, Well, according to the New York Times, there are still “baffling contradictions” in the data on health spending that might lead to a remarkable revision of the “final” estimate:

Behind that reversal were the results of a quarterly survey of service providers. The survey, conducted by the Census Bureau, asks 18,000 companies in 11 service industries about their revenue and expenses. Health care providers, including physicians and hospitals, reported a decline in revenue from the previous quarter.

Eventually, there will be a more comprehensive annual survey, which could change the numbers…Mr. Mandel, the B.E.A. economist, said the bureau was trying to figure out what happened. “On the why, I don’t have a clear answer,” he said in an interview. “We are trying to come up with theories.”

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Jul 11, 2014 | 8 comments | by
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