| For decades the number of Americans working in health care has only gone up.
During the Great Recession and its aftermath, the sector added 600,000 workers even as the broader economy lost 8.5 million. In the past 30 years, the health-care workforce doubled to 16 million, growing more than twice as fast as nonfarm payrolls. Until March, the industry has lost jobs in only four months in that period.
Covid-19 put a halt to that streak. About 43,000 health-care jobs vanished in March, and April’s labor report, to be released today, promises to be devastating. “This time, health care looks to be contributing to instead of counterbalancing an accelerating economic calamity,” economist Ani Turner of the nonprofit research institute Altarum wrote last month.
Economists forecast more than 21 million jobs lost across the economy and unemployment at a post-Depression high of 16%. Health-care won’t likely be spared. Even as hospitals in Covid-19 hotspots bring on more staff, much day-to-day medical care has been on pause. Most people aren’t getting dental cleanings or colonoscopies. High-margin surgical care is on hold. Even emergency rooms are emptying out.
Food banks like this one in Chula Vista, California, are overwhelmed because of widespread unemployment.
Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg
No one knows how quickly patients who put off care will come back.
“I think there may be fear of Covid, fear of contagion for some time until there’s a widespread and reliable vaccine or much better treatment,” Turner told me. “I think that fear is especially acute in going to a health-care setting. It’s one thing to pop in and get takeout from a restaurant. It’s another thing to go into a hospital for a scan.”
Inexorable health-care job growth isn’t an automatic good. Armies of administrators, billing specialists and other non-clinical workers add cost and complexity to the system.
The pandemic could force health-care organizations to become more efficient, especially if innovations like telehealth persist. But that’s little comfort to people out of work right now.—John Tozzi |