Healthcare Job Growth Boosts Employment Stats

"We are very excited about the numbers," said Stephanie Drake, Executive Director of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA). "It's important to us that these numbers are going up, and jobs are increasing in the healthcare space in a variety of different areas."

You'd think that President Obama would pull out his executive stationary to write a thank-you note to healthcare. Since this time last year, the industry has added 295,000 jobs. Since June of 2009, when the recession officially ended, it has added 872,000 jobs—37% of the total nonfarm job growth.

"We have seen an increase in requests for our services for open positions across all of these areas of inpatient and outpatient care, but I think we're starting to see the ripple effect of preparing and adapting an approach to fit that [lower-cost delivery] model," said Cynthia Kinnas, president of Randstad Healthcare.

According to Kinnas, as a reaction to health reform regulations and an improving economy, there is more money being invested into staffing healthcare facilities, to not only support caring for the flood of newly insured patients, but to do so at a higher quality.

Kinnas says hiring managers are exhibiting a change of mindset. "There's definitely a war for good talent," said Kinnas, who has worked in healthcare for 20 years.