The health care industry: is it well?
|
What is happening in the health care industry today? We hear that it is a high growth industry and that the fastest
growing occupations are concentrated in health services. However, there is a dark cloud hanging above this
industry: critical workforce shortages. Why should this be? What is the outlook over the next ten years or so?
How do we solve the worker shortage problem? To answer these questions, we look at the health care industry in
this issue.
Health care occupations are attractive. These occupations are located almost everywhere across our nation
and provide a professional work environment. Because the health care industry needs greater diversity among its
workforce, it also should be attractive to new labor pools.
In 2004, the health care industry contained about 545,000 establishments employing 13,062,000 persons in the
United States. An additional 411,000 persons were self-employed in this industry.
|
The table on the right shows the distribution of health care
establishments and workers in 2004. Here we see that
hospitals, while comprising only 1.9 percent of
establishments, employed 41.3 percent of the workers in
health services.
In contrast, the combined offices of physicians, offices of
dentists, and offices of other health practitioners,
accounting for 76.7 percent of health oriented
establishments, employed only 25.2 percent of all health
care workers. In 2004, about half of non-hospital health
care establishments employed fewer than 5 workers.
|
|
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics the health care industry is predicted to add nearly 3.5 million
new jobs, or 16 percent of all wage and salary employment, between 2002 and 2012. This is an increase of 30
percent in 11 years. Ten of the twenty fastest growing occupations are concentrated in health services. These
positions anticipate a 59 percent growth in medical assistants, 49 percent increase in physician assistants, an
increase of 48 percent in home health aides, and medical records and health information technicians will be up 47
percent.
As far as growth within the health industry is concerned, projected rates of employment growth for the various
segments of the industry range from 12.8 percent in hospitals, the largest and slowest-growing industry segment,
to 55.8 percent in the much smaller home health care services. 1
|
There is a crisis facing America’s labor market.
|
Three areas identified as problems contributing to this crisis are:
- Turnover—Health care workers are frequently overworked. There is heavy turnover in registered nurses,
direct care workers, medical diagnostic and treatment technologists and support workers because of short
staffing and frequent requests to work on weekends, scheduled day off, or a double shift.
- "Baby Boomer" population—America's Baby Boomers are aging and retiring from the workforce. Thus, we
have a crisis arising from a significant reduction in people with required skills, and a “leveling off” of the
number of American-born people available for jobs.
- Education—According to The Health Care Industry: Identifying and Addressing Workforce Challenges,
February 2004, "The slowing of educational attainment and its negative, long-term economic impact is
reported to be widely ignored in the face of present economic and international concerns. The number of
workers with high school completion diplomas grew 121 percent from 1980-2000. The twenty-year projections
are for a rise of only 25 percent, or an additional 20 million workers, with high school diplomas. Moreover, the
percentage of the workforce with college degrees is also expected to grow very slowly. The most optimistic
scenarios project a marked slowdown in skill growth." 2
|
How is this crisis being met?
|
There is a new emphasis in increasing diversity and actively seeking workers from non-traditional labor pools.
"From 1980 to 2000, 26.7 million new, native-born workers age 25-54 provided the workforce needed for our
dynamically growing economy. From now until 2021, there will be no additional native-born workers in this prime age
group. None. Therefore, any growth in the labor force will simply have to come from older workers and immigrants."
3
|
"Education has traditionally been key to improving productivity and our standard of living. In the future, it will
contribute relatively less to these productivity improvements. That is because for the past 20 years, workers entering
the labor force were far more educated than those they replaced. In the next 20 years, this will be much less the
case. Also, in the past 20 years, the number of college educated workers more than doubled. In the future, this
increase will be much smaller, even under the most optimistic scenarios. And the more pessimistic estimates keep
the percentage of the labor force that are college graduates virtually unchanged for the next two decades." 4
|
What can we do? Expand our workforce. We need to become more productive through better worker education.
We also need to lessen the disparity between the most successful and least successful sectors of our workforce. To
do this, the health care industry must invest in and expand training opportunities. This industry must find ways to
boost productivity, and reach out to every possible worker.
|
Some solutions requiring immediate action are:
- The health care industry must develop programs focused on non-traditional and traditional labor pools for
health care entry level workers. These programs must broaden approaches to make easier for a worker's
ability to advance within the health care industry.
- Develop partnerships that implement youth related programs. These partnerships must include health care
employers, economic development and public workforce agencies, schools and post-secondary programs for
health occupations training.
- Programs must be developed and implemented to encourage community colleges and other educational
organizations to increase vocational health care training programs.
|
Education required for health care jobs:
|
Many health care jobs require less than 4 years of college education, although most technical jobs require at least a
2-year technical degree.
A variety of post-high school programs provide specialized training for jobs in health services. Students preparing
for health care careers can enter programs leading to a certificate or a degree at the associate, baccalaureate,
professional, or graduate level. Two-year programs resulting in certificates or Associate degrees are the minimum
standard credential for occupations such as a dental hygienist or radiological technologist.
Managers in health care need to have the management, coaching, and cultural competency skills to enable them to
communicate effectively in an increasingly diverse work environment.
|
Sources:
1. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
2. U.S. Department of Labor, The Health Care Industry: Identifying and Addressing Workforce Challenges, February 2004
3. The Aspen Institute Domestic Strategy Group. Grow Faster Together. Or Grow Slowly Apart. How will America Work in the
21st Century.
4. Ibid.
|
| |
|
|
In the next issue: the agricultural industry, is it growing?
|
| |
Web site design by Victor and Steven Coelho
Our linking to the above sites does not constitute an endorsement of any products, services or the information found
on them. Once you link to another site you are subject to the policies of the new site.
Copyright © 2006 Labor Market Snippets. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
|
|
