Blog Post: Jobs in Healthcare - An Industry that remains Strong and Booming!

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, job opportunities in healthcare should be excellent in all employment settings with projected growth of 19 percent through 2014.  There are many reasons for the growth, but some key indicators are high job turnover, and the expected large number of retirements for boomers as well as people living longer, plus tougher immigration rules that are slowing the numbers of foreign health care workers entering the U.S.

Wages and salary in the health care industry are projected to increase 27 percent through 2014 as well, compared with 14 percent for all industries combined.  Projected rates of employment growth for the different segments within the healthcare industry start at 13 percent in hospitals.

What does that mean for job seekers? This a reliable, stable and growing industry with huge opportunity for a long career path in many fields. The key for everyone to remember is that there are many many areas that make up healthcare - everything from administrative, IT, pharmacy, digital imaging, marketing, public relations, advertising, therapist etc... you have to look beyond Doctors, Nurses and specialist and surgeons. If you take it a step further, every department uses equipment, installation, maintenance etc... So when we say healthcare we are talking about a massive industry.

Nationally, again, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau for Labor Statistics, by far the greatest number of of health care establishments (about 76 percent) are offices of physicians, dentists, or other health practitioners and, although hospitals constitute only 2 percent of all health care establishments, they employ 40 percent of all workers.

In addition to being one of  the largest industry, healthcare remains among the fastest-growing.  According to BLS projections, 8 of the top 20 fastest-growing occupations are in healthcare, and the industry is also expected to lead in new wage and salary job creation.

While many of the jobs require signifcantly higher education - the bulk of the jobs require less than 4 years of college education or certificate.

Bottom Line - healthcare continues to boom and will do so for the foreseable future. This is an excellent industry that offers wonderful and fullfilling careers in almost any profession.