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Healthcare Drives US Job Growth in May

 |  By John Commins  
   June 04, 2012

The healthcare sector created 32,800 jobs in May—accounting for 47.5% of the 69,000 new jobs in the larger economy for the month, new federal data shows.

Healthcare continues to be one of the few steady bright spots in the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly job growth report. The reports have otherwise been erratic and lackluster since the economic downturn in 2008 and continuing through the ongoing tepid recovery.

Chris J. Conover, a scholar with the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University, says the good news about job growth for the healthcare sector is not necessarily good news for everyone else.

"We're all paying for it and it's an indication of where consumption is going," Conover says. "That's been true for a long time and in some senses that statistic is in opposition to this good news story about declining healthcare costs. It is an indicator that healthcare is taking a growing share of the economy."

May job figures from BLS show that ambulatory services, which include physicians' offices, accounted for 22,800 of the new healthcare sector jobs for the month, and hospitals accounted for 4,500 new jobs.

In the first five months of 2012, healthcare created 158,300 jobs, which represent 19.2% of the 823,000 jobs created in the United States. Healthcare created 115,800 jobs in the first five months of 2011, BLS data shows

BLS data from April and May are preliminary and may be revised considerably in the coming months.

In the larger economy, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 69,000 in May. Modest job growth in transportation, warehousing and manufacturing were offset by the loss of 28,000 construction jobs. As a result, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 8.2% for the month. Job growth has declined considerably in the last three months after a hopeful start to 2012 that averaged 252,000 jobs per month in January and February, BLS reports.

Revised BLS figures show that healthcare created 21,900 jobs in April, 31,600 jobs in March, 38,200 jobs in February, and 33,800 jobs in January, continuing a strong trend that saw 296,900 new jobs in 2011. Healthcare accounted for more than 18% of the 1.6 million new jobs in the overall economy in 2011.

More than 14.3 million people worked in the healthcare sector in May, with more than 4.8 million of those jobs at hospitals and more than 6.3 million jobs in ambulatory services, which includes more than 2.4 million jobs in physicians' offices.

In the larger economy, BLS said 12.7 million people were unemployed in May, a slight increase from April. The number of long-term unemployed, defined as those who have been jobless for 27 weeks or longer, grew slightly to 5.4 million people in May, representing 42.8% of the unemployed.

John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.

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