Healthcare is expected to remain the engine of America’s job market through 2034
Not everyone is as sure as the BLS about the industry’s prospects.
Amid the somewhat bleaker picture painted by August’s jobs report, the US healthcare industry provided a bright spot, adding 31,000 jobs while most other sectors slumped.
Though that figure actually signals a slight slowdown — which, as noted by The Wall Street Journal, could be a concern, as the sector increasingly props up the entire jobs market — the future prospects of the industry still seem bright. Indeed, per forecasts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare-related industries are likely to top the charts in terms of employment growth in the coming decade or so.
According to the Bureau’s numbers, jobs in healthcare and social assistance are forecast to grow an impressive 12.4% in the coming decade. That’s more than any other group, including the AI-charged “computer and mathematical” industry, which came in second, with employment projected to grow 10.1%.
As always, you can interpret this forecast in almost any way you want. The positive spin is that the service industry for the elderly and for the disabled is forecast to make more jobs (528,500) over the next decade than any other detailed industry studied by the BLS, as a growing number of people demand in-home care. That means more jobs, of course.
The negative spin would be that this is mostly only because America, like so many other nations, has an aging and increasingly sick population that will require more care going forward.
