Hospital Job Growth Up Slightly in February

The larger U.S. economy gained 192,000 jobs in February and the nation's jobless rate fell slightly from 9% to 8.9% for the month as the number of unemployed people decreased by 600,000 to 13.7 million. The number of long-term unemployed -- people jobless for 27 weeks or longer – fell from 6.2 million in January to 6 million in February and accounted for 43.9% of the unemployed, BLS preliminary data shows.

Even with the relatively slower healthcare job growth in February, the sector has been one of the few areas of steady job growth during the recession and slow recovery, creating 828,900 jobs since the recession began in December 2007, BLS data show.