Healthcare workers are in high demand as the sector creates more positions

Healthcare workers are in high demand as the sector adds more positions at a faster pace than other sectors. Yahoo Finance reporter Anjalee Khemlani examines the healthcare worker market and explains why demand has remained strong since the pandemic.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video Transcription

Now let’s move on to an important story in the labor market.

This is due to the increasing demand for work in the healthcare sector.

We have seen healthcare absorb a huge share of the jobs added each month, with job openings growing faster than most other sectors.

We are now joined by Yahoo Finance, Health Reporter, and others to bring you the latest on this topic.

Thank you for joining us.

I know you worked on this report in the context of the labor market and the health care workforce.

What do we know about the scale of demand and how long does it last?

So we’ve seen consistent growth in healthcare employment since April, or more specifically since April 2023, when healthcare consistently started to top the list of three sectors that saw growth in employment. Much of that is due to staff turnover.

Here’s the less positive part of this story that happens behind the scenes.

While it’s a month-to-month disaster, the story behind the scenes is a little darker, with burnout worsening during the pandemic, a physician shortage that was already known before the pandemic, and still lingering in the workplace because of burnout.

So we just build on top of each other.

There is also pressure from payers.

This includes insurers such as Medicare, Medicaid and the like.

And then there was a shift in demand. We saw, you know, the push to improve health and then push back.

There are many other factors that influence where doctors go and where they find work.

That’s why things like startups and health companies have also withdrawn from the traditional market for a while.

Therefore, the healthcare sector has been looking for solutions to this problem.

We talked about funding more positions in graduate schools, in medical schools for students, and also providing more positions for residents.

It is funded by the federal government.

Meanwhile, there are also options such as the care team, i.e. people who do not necessarily become doctors, but are part of the care team.

This was another solution.

The healthcare industry has been looking for ways to solve this problem for years, but while there is no solution yet, we will see a wave of more hiring and more job games happening every month.