Justin Fox, Columnist

Don’t Cheer for the Health-Care Hiring Boom

No matter what’s happening in the rest of the economy, the sector keeps adding jobs.

May 3, 2019 at 4:28 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Just keep smiling.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Of the 263,000 nonfarm payroll jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates were created in April, 27,000 were in health care.

This is not really news: Since the beginning of 2015, the average monthly gain in health-care jobs has been 28,959. Since 2010, it’s been 23,893; since 2000, it’s been 24,041; since 1990, it’s been 23,709. Only four of the 351 months since January 1990 have seen declines in health-care employment.