Has healthcare become America's jobs engine?

Emma, welcome to the Gist Healthcare Podcast.

Thank you for having me.

So your analysis found that healthcare accounted for roughly three-quarters of net job growth in the US economy between September twenty twenty-five and September twenty twenty-six.

So looking at the big picture, what stood out to you and your colleagues about that finding?

Big picture, I think it's important to just realize that the jobs numbers that we're seeing right now do still project that the overall economy is growing.

Um, there are more jobs being added each month.

But when you take healthcare out, the jobs numbers have been essentially flat for the last year.

So basically, almost all of the growth that we're seeing is being driven by healthcare and jobs in the healthcare sector.

And that brings us to the title of your piece, Is This a Healthcare Economy? Healthcare already accounts for a significant share of the US economy.

But when you look beyond healthcare, some of the weakness in the labor market is concentrated in a handful of sectors, uh, including government, which might be a, a surprise.

So how should we interpret healthcare's overall contribution to job growth with that in mind?

I think it's important that we note that healthcare is not the only growing sector.

There are other areas of the economy that are growing.

We see growth in construction.

We see growth in private education and social assistance.

Um, but healthcare is growing much faster than even most of the other growing economic sectors.

So I think when we look at the overall economy and you say, where has there been steady growth in the last year, healthcare is the area that stands out.

And as you mentioned, healthcare is not the only sector adding jobs, but it is outperforming many others.

So what's driving that growth?

I think we're seeing that there is a very consistent demand for healthcare services, and as a result, there's a very consistent demand for professionals who can perform those services.

It's much, uh, harder to go without healthcare if you feel like your dollars are being squeezed than it is to go without, you know, new goods and services, new electronics, manufacturing products, those sorts of things.

So when we look back in US history, it's pretty common to see that even in periods of tight economic, uh, conditions, we see that healthcare jobs continue to grow pretty steadily.

There's a couple of reasons for this.

Um, one large one is that the US population is an aging population.

We have a large generation that's sort of hitting those elderly years, and they require a lot more healthcare than they did twenty or thirty years ago.