The Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed it’s April jobs report and the numbers are positively startling. The US job market is getting robust with job openings rising to 5.4 million on the last day of April, the highest point since they started tracking this series in Dec 2000.
Key Findings:
The economy is creating jobs faster than it can fill, with 5.4 million openings and only 5 million hires
Jobs were entirely created in the private sector with government jobs remaining unchanged
Openings increased in healthcare and professional and business services
Openings decreased in mining and logging, and in the arts, entertainment and recreation
The overall unemployment rate continues to be approximately 5.5% in line with prior months
The Healthcare Job Rush
Healthcare continues to see significant job growth in the US. Healthcare jobs have been growing at over 4% since last December compared to 3.4-3.7% for the rest of the economy.
The really startling fact is that although healthcare jobs continue to be created at 700k — 750k openings per month, they are only getting filled at 450k — 525k hires per month. As Bloomberg points out with a very instructive chart, there are now 1.8 healthcare jobs available for every person hired in the industry.
What Could This Mean For Wages?
BLS had earlier forecast healthcare jobs to grow at 2.6% annually between 2012-2022. As current job openings continue to grow, and more importantly the gap between openings and hires continues to expand, salaries for healthcare workers could begin to rise sharply, higher than the current levels of 2.2%, which are inline with wage growth across all industry.
So maybe it’s time to check out our healthcare job collections below.