As unemployment rates climbed yet again, the healthcare industry added 32,000 jobs in the month of December, according to the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), released this morning. Unemployment rose to an astonishing rate of 7.2%, while the healthcare industry added more jobs. In 2008, the healthcare industry gained a total of 372,000 jobs.
Despite record-breaking layoffs in pharmaceutical companies, and with the layoffs now starting to affect some hospital systems, healthcare remains by far the strongest industry, and the only industry adding jobs.
Of the jobs added in the healthcare industry in December, about 14,000 were added in ambulatory care (out-patient, office based care) and 12,000 hospital jobs were added.
Fortunately, healthcare industry employment is not mirroring the unemployment trends of the overall job market. Since the beginning of the recession in December of 2007, a net total of 3.6 million jobs have been lost in other industries, according to the BLS report, with 1.9 million of those jobs having been lost in the past four months.
This is a positive trend for all pursuing or interested in the health care vocation.