The healthcare sector created 32,000 jobs in February despite the specter of 2% Medicare cuts mandated by sequestration, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
Within the healthcare sector there was a gain of 14,000 jobs in ambulatory healthcare services, which include physicians' offices and outpatient care centers. Hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities each created 9,000 jobs for the month.
The buildup to the sequestration over the last several months has raised concerns about widespread layoffs and other challenges to providers struggling to meet thinner margins.
Nicole Smith, a senior economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, says that "healthcare seems to beat all odds" when it comes to job creation.
"During the most painful recession since the Great Depression, this sector also continued to add jobs at a steady pace," Smith said in an email exchange.
"The growth in healthcare jobs in this most recent job report is not surprising though, even in light of sequestration cuts. For one, the March report reflects February statistics and the impact of sequestration will be felt throughout the year."
Smith noted that 700,000 jobs are projected to be lost across the economy between March 2013 and December 2014 due to sequestration, but that only 4% or 28,000 of those lost jobs will be in the healthcare sector.
"This is disproportionately low as healthcare represents 13% of all jobs today and 18 cents of every dollar spent," Smith says. "The bottom line is, look out for a slowdown in growth over the next few months, but much like the last five years, healthcare is still a good bet."
While the 2% Medicare sequestration cuts went into effect on March 1, providers generally won't start feeling them until April 1. In the meantime, lobbyists and professional associations from virtually every corner of the healthcare sector have called upon President Obama and Congress to reach a consensus on a budget deal to avert the cuts.
As in previous years, the surge in healthcare hiring in January and February could be more a function of timing for healthcare providers using calendar year budgets.
Generally, these budgets and their accompanying staffing requests are approved by December, and the hiring and on-boarding processes commences in January. In January and February 2012, for example, the healthcare sector created 64,600 jobs. For the remaining 10 months, healthcare created an average of 23,240 new positions each month.
Healthcare created 320,600 new jobs in 2012 and 296,900 new jobs in 2011.
Nearly 14.5 million people worked in the healthcare sector in February, with more than 4.8 million of those jobs at hospitals, and more than 6.4 million jobs in ambulatory services, which includes more than 2.4 million jobs in physicians' offices.
BLS data from January and February are preliminary and may be revised considerably in the coming months.
In the larger economy, the nation's unemployment rate dropped to 7.7% in February, the lowest rate since December 2008, with 236,000 new jobs reported for the month. Those jobs were largely clustered in the professional and business services sector (73,000), construction (48,000), healthcare, (32,000), and retail trade (24,000).
However, public sector jobs dropped by 10,000 and the BLS noted that the labor force shrank by 130,000 people owing largely to retirements and "discouraged workers" who can't find work and have stopped looking.
Even with the strong gains in February, BLS said 12 million people were unemployed for the month, which is a slight improvement from January's measure. The number of long-term unemployed, defined as those who have been jobless for 27 weeks or longer, was little changed at 4.8 million in February, and represented 40.2% of the unemployed.
John Commins is the news editor for HealthLeaders.