45,000 of the 223,000 jobs added in April were in health services, according to today’s Employment Situation Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This continues the trend seen in March. As shown in Table 1, jobs in ambulatory settings accounted for well over half of health jobs.
Vox’s Mattew Yglesias, an undaunted Obamacare supporter, has listed “7 charts that show what Obamacare critics are getting wrong”. The first is, you guessed it, that chart from the Gallup survey of health insurance that this blog has been analyzing and criticizing pretty relentlessly.
I’m not going to go through all seven, but focus on his claim that Obamacare is not causing part-time work at the expense of full-time work. Here it is:
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.
Today’s employment report, cheered as positive, had a grey lining for health workers. January’s report showed a big boost in health jobs, but that reversed itself in February.
Total nonfarm payroll increased by 295,000 from January, but only 24,000 (fewer than 8 percent of the total) were health jobs. And 9,000 of those jobs were in hospitals. Physicians’ offices saw 7,000 jobs, but employment in other health facilities grew only slightly or shrank (Table 1).
