Decline in Hospital Jobs During March

Between the financial crisis, the housing market crisis and the credit crisis, many job seekers may feel like they are in the middle of their own personal crisis. The recession has caused many industries to see a sever decrease in employment. Through it all healthcare jobs have continued to be in abundance, especially in comparison to other sectors. But now, recent data shows that even the healthcare industry may be beginning to feel the effects of the economy’s downward spiral.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hospital jobs fell slightly in the month of the March, as the national unemployment rate climbed to 8.5 percent. This is the first decrease in jobs that the sector has experienced since the national recession began in December of 2007.

Preliminary data that has been adjusted for seasonal elements that effect employment shows that the number of people employed by hospitals declined by 700 workers during last month. Although this is somewhat upsetting, considering the fact that the healthcare industry has remained the economy’s bright spot, the decline was still less than a tenth of a percent of the people employed by hospitals. These medical facilities still employ approximately 4.71 million people.

This decline in hospital jobs isn’t the first sign that the recession has begun to affect the healthcare industry. The sector started seeing mass layoffs sometime last year. They hit their highest point during September of 2008, but they have remained somewhat higher than is normal for the industry since then. Still, until March’s decline, hospitals that weren’t laying off workers were actually hiring enough new employees to make up for the positions lost.

For the last 16 months, which is as long as the recession has been going on, hospitals have continued to hire. The average number of job seekers that found employment in the industry each month was 9,700. The last time that there was a decline in employment in hospital facilities was back in June of 2004.

Despite the decline in jobs at hospitals, overall healthcare employment rose during the month of March. Approximately 13,500 jobs were created in the sector last month. Still, this shows a slowdown from the average of 30,000 positions created each month during 2008.

The largest area of growth in the industry during March was ambulatory healthcare services, including positions at physician offices. This sector saw an increase of 3,200 positions last month, which is a gain of 0.1 percent. The ambulatory healthcare services workforce now stands at 2.31 million.

During March, the U.S. economy saw the loss of 663,000 jobs and unemployment rose 0.4 percent from 8.1 percent in February to 8.5 percent.