Healthcare Industry Defies Slowing U.S. Job Market

America’s lucrative job market of recent years is now long gone, with the unemployment rate recently rising to its highest level since October 2021.

Demand for healthcare workers remains red hot.

However, there’s still some serious momentum in one industry. These workers have plentiful job opportunities available across the country and are earning higher wage gains than the broader private sector, Bryan Mena reported for CNN.

Employers in this industry also hire quickly and typically offer attractive perks such as massive sign-on bonuses and tuition reimbursement.

Enter America’s top job creator: the mighty healthcare industry. So far in 2024, health care has added an impressive 59,000 jobs per month on average through July, according to Labor Department data released in early August.

That’s the most of any industry and includes positions such as nurses, home health aides, and emergency medical technicians.

Demand for healthcare workers remains red hot, according to recent government data on job openings. In June, the healthcare and social assistance industry had the highest seasonally adjusted job openings rate of any industry, at 7.6%, well above the total rate across the job market of 5.5% that month.

"Healthcare is a major, major engine of growth. I mean, it’s just incredible how much demand there is for those workers," said Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s chief economist.