For more than half a century, in good economic times and bad, health care jobs in the US just kept increasing. Economists and health analysts thought of them as nearly recession-proof: a buffer against the business cycle. But, says a report in The New York Times, like so many other patterns, the coronavirus pandemic has broken this relationship. With the virus and its fallout deterring Americans from using the health system, job losses started in March and accelerated to 1.4m last month. “This is a disruption unlike any we’ve seen in decades,” said Ani Turner, the co-director of sustainable health spending strategies at the Altarum Institute, which tracks trends in health care spending and employment.
The report says a sudden drop in health spending and employment amid a pandemic might seem like a paradox. But it reflects how the health industry tends to make its money: Treating patients for a deadly illness is far less profitable than offering them elective surgeries. When the US government asked hospitals to stop such procedures to free up capacity, that changed their economics profoundly.
The report says in previous recessions, the health industry has not taken such a hit. Because most Americans have health insurance, health services are more insulated from the business cycle than other kinds of spending.
The industry still seems somewhat protected: Health care jobs have fallen by less than jobs in the rest of the economy. But in the Great Recession, as jobs of nearly every kind plummeted, health jobs kept growing at a good clip. In the eyes of many economists, it was health care that led the economic recovery, by providing a powerful and reliable jobs engine. All those new health workers helped strengthen their local economies.
The report says this downturn is clearly different, and the enormous reductions in the health work force mean the recovery may be different, too. Some of the lost jobs in health care are likely to come back later. Cancer patients who postponed chemotherapy, or people who cancelled their hip replacements, will eventually want that care.
But, the report says, other changes may be permanent.
[link url="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/upshot/health-jobs-plummeting-virus.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_200509&instance_id=18360&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=42505380&segment_id=27043&user_id=c3d9778832e13a8ee81a16ebe4996cb9"]Full report in The New York Times[/link]