Healthcare Adds 62K Jobs in April, Strongly Outpaces Monthly Average

Job growth in healthcare is chugging along while other industries deal with a stagnation due to economic pressures.

Despite job growth across all industries declining last month, healthcare continued to add jobs at an encouraging rate.

The sector gained 62,200 jobs in May, a step up from the 50,600 jobs added in April and well above the average monthly increase of 44,000 over the past 12 months, according to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The growth was largely driven by hospitals and ambulatory healthcare services, which saw an increase of 29,900 and 28,700 jobs, respectively.

Within ambulatory healthcare services, 9,800 jobs came from physician offices and 12,300 were contributed by home healthcare services.

Skilled nursing care facilities chipped in 6,300 jobs, but job loss across other parts of nursing and residential care facilities resulted in the subsector adding 3,600 jobs, a significant decrease from the 7,100 jobs created in April.

Overall, the U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, down from the increase of 177,000 jobs in April and below the average monthly gain of 149,000 over the prior 12 months.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, held at 4.2% last month and has remained in a narrow range of 4% to 4.2% since May 2024. In total, 7.2 million people were unemployed.

Even with healthcare demonstrating job growth, hospitals and health systems across the country have been reducing their workforce to contend with rising labor costs.

PeaceHealth became one of the latest health systems to opt for layoffs earlier this month when the Pacific Northwest-based organization announced that it would cut 1% of its staff.