By January, there were 2.5 million more healthcare jobs than at the start of the Great Recession, with nearly two-thirds of that growth coming from ambulatory care settings.

Ani Turner, deputy director of Altarum Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending, and her coauthors examined the nature of the employment growth in a Health Affairs blog. Health care jobs overall grew by 19 percent, with a growth rate of 11 percent in hospitals. Within ambulatory care, home health had the fastest rate of job growth at 49 percent, physician offices grew by 17 percent and jobs in all other ambulatory settings grew by 34 percent.

“These patterns of growth have shifted the mix of jobs by delivery setting slightly since 2007,” Turner and his coauthors wrote. “Currently, hospitals employ about one-third of health care jobs, down from 35 percent in 2007. The share of health jobs in ambulatory care settings is 46 percent, up from 42 percent in 2007, and nursing and residential care represents the remaining 21 percent, down from 22 percent in 2007.”

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