Healthcare Job Growth Slows in April

"As [hospital leaders] think about what makes sense for the consumer and what makes sense for their own employees, they figure out these ambulatory campuses make a lot more sense," she says. "There's plenty of parking. Your lab is right there. The outpatient imaging is right there. Everything is right there in a cluster, easily accessible to people, as opposed to hospitals that many times have aging facilities that are not necessarily laid out for efficiency."

In the first four months of 2012, healthcare accounted for 14.4% of the 803,000 jobs created in the United States. Even with the slowdown over the last two months, healthcare job growth is outstripping the pace set in 2011. The sector created 116,300 jobs so far this year, compared with the 96,900 jobs created in the first four months of 2011, BLS reports.

Genser says the only thing that could slow job growth in healthcare would be if the U.S. Supreme Court throws out the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "That would slow [job growth] but it won't stop it. It's really the right model, and now that there has been impetus for it, people are excited about it. Improving care in their communities is what they want to do," she says.

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