Healthcare Creates 169K Jobs Halfway Through 2012

In the larger economy, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 80,000 in June, led by modest job growth in professional and business services, temporary help services, and management and consulting services. Job growth in the overall economy has fallen steeply in the last four months after averaging 252,000 new jobs in both January and February, BLS reports.  

Halfway through 2012, healthcare job growth is slightly ahead of the pace set in 2011, when healthcare created 296,900 jobs and accounted for more than 18% of the 1.6 million new jobs in the overall economy.

More than 14.3 million people worked in the healthcare sector in June, 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 June, which was essentially unchanged from May. The number of long-term unemployed, defined as those who have been jobless for 27 weeks or longer, remained at 5.4 million people in June, representing 41.9% of the unemployed.