Economic Update: Health Care Employment
08.14.2009
Health care has been the most resilient sector during the current recession. For example, the national employment report released last Friday showed that health care and educational services gained 17,000 jobs nationally. Regionally, Louisville Metro is also up in health care jobs when compared to last year.
Given the importance of health care to Floyd and Clark, and the performance of the sector during the current recession, we examine recent and longer term trends in health care for Floyd and Clark Counties. We focus on the health care and social services sector, which includes four subsectors: ambulatory health care, hospitals, nursing and residential care, and social assistance.
Overall Employment Growth
First, health care and social services employment increased from roughly 8,700 payroll jobs in 2002 to about 10,000 in 2008, or 13% of all jobs located in Floyd and Clark (See Figure 1).
Figure 1
The change in health care jobs from year to year has also typically been greater than the change in overall jobs. Figure 2 shows the average quarterly change from year to year. As the graph shows, there were two years when the change in health care jobs was noticeably lower than the change in total jobs. The last set of bars in Figure 2 shows the change during the first year of the current recession. While the overall change in non-farm payrolls jobs was slightly positive, health care related jobs grew by 5%. In fact, since 2002, the greatest change in health care jobs occurred during the first year of the current recession.
Figure 2
Ambulatory Health Care Employment Compared to Nation
Location quotients can conveniently compare a region’s employment in a particular sector compared to employment in that same sector nationally. A location quotient is simply the local sector’s percentage of total employment divided by percentage employment in the sector nationally. So for example, if a location quotient exceeds 1, this implies that the local county has a higher percentage of jobs in a particular sector compared to the overall nation. A location quotient of less than one suggests that a lower percentage of jobs exist in the sector in question compared to the nation.
Figure 3 takes a look at ambulatory health care employment and how Floyd and Clark compare to employment for the same sector nationally. Due to confidentiality reasons, data for the hospitals subsector are limited for Floyd and Clark, and thus we only focus on ambulatory health care, which includes physicians, dentists, optometrists, chiropractors, specialty therapists, outpatient care, medical and diagnostic labs, and home health care.
Figure 3 shows location quotients for ambulatory health care in Floyd and Clark from 2001 to 2008. Despite the overall growth in health care employment for the two counties, the growth in ambulatory health care has not kept pace with the nation’s economy. Figure 3 shows that the location quotient for ambulatory health care in Floyd and Clark both declined from 2001 to 2008. In comparing Floyd and Clark, Floyd’s location quotient is actually greater than one, implying that a greater percentage of jobs exist in ambulatory health care when compared to the national average. However, the number declined from 2001 to 2008.
Figure 3
Conclusion
Health care employment has certainly increased in Floyd and Clark since 2001. The percentage change of jobs in health care typically exceeds the overall change in jobs, and the sector has been the most resilient during the current recession. In fact since 2002, the greatest change in health care jobs occurred during the first year of the current recession.
###
This information is provided by
Uric Dufrene.
Uric Dufrene, Ph.D. holds the Sanders Chair in Business in the School of Business at Indiana University Southeast. He conducts research on local and regional economic trends, and teaches corporate finance at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He previously served as dean of the School of Business.
|
