Health care employment accounted for 10.74 percent of total employment in the United States in March, according to a report by the Altarum Institute. One out of every nine jobs was in the health care sector—an all-time high, the report says.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) March 2013 employment data show that health care employment rose by 23,000 jobs in March, and most were in ambulatory care. Health care has added 1.4 million jobs since the start of the recession in December 2007, the report says, while non-health employment has fallen.

The Altarum Institute is a nonprofit health systems research and consulting organization.

Read the report here.

Dentists and nurses are the occupations that will offer the best employment opportunity, salary, work-life balance, and job security in 2013, according to an annual ranking released by U.S. News & World Report. Other health care jobs also made the top tier, including physicians at number five, out of 100 occupations listed.

The dental profession should grow 21.1 percent by 2020, the piece says, and physicians will see “abundant job growth” in that same period. Nurses will also be in greater demand as the population ages, but the rankings note that nurses “will almost always have great hiring opportunity” because of the expanse of the profession.

U.S. News gives each profession is given an overall score calculated from seven component measures: 10-year growth volume, 10-year growth percentage, median salary, employment rate, future job prospects, stress level, and work-life balance.

See the full list.

A report from the consulting firm Accenture finds a significant drop in physicians who practice independently, from 57 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2012. Business costs and expenses were the top concerns influencing physicians’ decision to seek employment (cited by 87 percent of survey respondents).

For those who remain independent, alternative business models are becoming more common. Accenture estimates that one-third of independent physicians will adopt subscription-based care models, like high-end concierge medicine and direct pay models.

“Doctors who convert to subscription-based models that shift the focus away from service volume will not only access greater financial rewards, but will also gain the flexibility to get back to the basics of patient care,” the report says. “Patients could also reap the rewards by gaining enhanced access to care at a service level they can afford.”

Accenture estimates that only 36 percent of physicians will be practicing independently by the end of 2013.  The survey of 204 physicians who represented an equal split of primary care and specialty physicians was conducted in May.

Read the report.

Sarah Burgard, PhD, MS, MA, is an alumna of the RWJF Health & Society Scholars program, and an associate professor of sociology and epidemiology and research associate professor at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. Burgard recently co-authored a study that finds perceived job insecurity is linked with significantly higher odds of fair or poor self-reported health, symptoms of depression, and anxiety attacks.

Human Capital Blog: What got you interested in researching the working lives and health outcomes of adults? Was there anything in particular that sparked your curiosity about job insecurity?

Sarah Burgard: I was interested in the excellent research being done by health disparities researchers that focused on socioeconomic position and its strong and persistent relationship with health. My dissertation looked at race and socioeconomic position and how they shaped children's health in different societies. When I started looking at the lives of adults in wealthy economies and focusing on health disparities in these groups, it struck me that most scholars were focused on education and income as stratifying factors, but not looking deeply at what connected them: paid employment.

Careers characterized by stimulating and satisfying work versus dangerous, monotonous or insecure work are of considerable interest in their own right to sociologists of stratification, but they could also be important for understanding divergence in health, as considerable research in occupational psychology and epidemiology has suggested. Many of the projects I've done have been aimed at bringing together the strong work in each of these fields to build even stronger explanations of the way work (or lack of work) influence health. I've been interested in less explored aspects of work, such as perceptions of job insecurity among those still employed, and in taking better account of the multitude of psychosocial aspects of work that affect individuals at a given point in time and the ways these could change over the career.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that health care employment rose by 44,000 jobs in September.

Most of the gains were in ambulatory care services (+30,000 jobs), with much of the growth in outpatient care centers. Hospitals added 8,000 jobs, and nursing and residential care added 6,000 jobs. Over the past year, employment in health care has risen by 295,000 jobs.

September’s gains are the second largest for the health care industry in a decade, according to a brief from the Altarum Institute, and the strong showing drove the health sector share of total employment to a new high of 10.81 percent.

Read a news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Read the Altarum Institute brief.

The United States health care workforce will have to expand by almost 30 percent between 2010 and 2020 to meet growing demand for care, according to a new study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and Workforce. The estimated 5.6 million health care job vacancies created over the next ten years is expected to be the most dramatic growth in any job sector in the country during that time period.

“Nursing will grow the fastest among healthcare occupations… but that won’t be enough to meet the demand,” the study says. Demand for health care “support occupations,” like home health aides, is also expected to increase at a rapid rate.

The study also predicts that demand for post-secondary education and training in health care jobs—which is already high—will continue to increase.

Read the study.

In a month when national employment data were largely unchanged, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the health care industry added nearly 33,000 jobs in May, continuing as a strong and growing field. Over the year, health care employment has risen by 340,000 jobs.

Employment in ambulatory care services accounted for the majority of the new jobs in the industry (23,000). That growth was seen mostly in physicians’ offices (9,900), home care services (6,900) and outpatient care centers (4,600).

Demand for health care employees remains strong. Nurse.com reports that data from Wanted Analytics finds that employers posted more than 620,000 online job ads for health care careers in May, an increase of 5 percent from a year prior.

Read more about the Bureau of Labor Statistics May Employment Situation Summary.

Read the Nurse.com article.

By 2020, nearly one in nine jobs in the United States will be in the health care sector, according to new research from the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The industry is expected to add 4.2 million jobs during that time, growing at twice the rate of the overall economy.

The United States will need nearly 7.5 million health care workers to fill new and existing jobs, the report says, including 1.2 million registered nurses (RNs). The largest job growth is expected among RNs, home health aides, and personal care aides.

“With an aging health care professional workforce, we will not only see new job growth but also openings in existing positions as workers retire or leave for other job opportunities," Robert Martiniano, principal author of the report, said in a news release.

The report also found that the majority of jobs (63 percent) are expected to be concentrated in ambulatory care (non-institutional settings).

The analysis is based on data from the biennial U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 10-year (2010-2020) occupational and industry projections for employment.

Read more about the job outlook for physicians, nurses and frontline workers.

Read the study from the Center for Health Workforce Studies.

Read a news release about the study.

The health care industry added 22,600 jobs in December, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data is consistent with the upward trend the industry demonstrated throughout the year; health care gained about 315,000 jobs in 2011.

Ambulatory health services were responsible for 11,300 of the new jobs, and hospitals accounted for approximately 10,000 jobs.

Perhaps due to the increase in health care jobs filled, a new report from The Conference Board finds that online advertised vacancies for health care practitioners decreased in December. A decrease in advertised vacancies for Registered Nurses (RNs) was largely responsible for the drop, but demand for other health care practitioners remains high. “The number of advertised vacancies in this occupational category continues to be quite favorable and outnumber job-seekers by 2.9 to 1,” the report says.