As health care employment numbers continue to climb, according to new federal data, nursing homes are only seeing slight job growth.
Employers in health care overall saw 53,000 more jobs in October, with nursing homes seeing an estimated 4,100 more new hires, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. When including residential care facilities, the total climbs to more than 11,000 jobs.
This compares to ambulatory health care services gaining 31,000 jobs and hospitals gaining 11,000 jobs.
Other recent data sources are also showing that staffing may be slightly less of an issue compared to earlier in the year.
Just 9% of senior care operators reported severe staffing shortages at their organization — down from 25% of respondents who reported the same back in March, according to the most recent NIC Executive Insights Survey collected between Sept. 19 and Oct. 16.
Still, 24% of operators have had to limit admissions due to staffing shortages, according to the data, and attracting community and caregiving staff was the second most cited challenge operators faced (79%) followed by staff turnover (67%).
In other words, job growth is still not keeping up with the industry’s dire shortages in many places across the country.
In Massachusetts, for example, 6,900 registered nurse, licensed practical nurse and certified nurse assistant (CNA) positions were open at nursing facilities, representing 22% of jobs that are currently unfilled, according to a report from WBUR. More than 3,900 of the unfilled jobs were CNA positions.
On a wider scale, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 261,000 in October. Monthly job growth has averaged 407,000 thus far in 2022, compared with 562,000 per month in 2021, according to the BLS report.
Companies featured in this article:
