Legal Nurse Advisor

Posts Tagged ‘Forcast’

As the U.S. population ages, healthcare management jobs are likely to increase greatly, both in number and in remuneration. This also includes careers in healthcare such as administration and allied health occupations in which business skills are more important than a medical degree.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), health care was the nation’s largest industry in 2004, providing 13.5 million jobs nationwide. About 411,000 of these health care workers were independent, self-employed professionals. 40% of the fastest growing occupations consist of careers in healthcare. Such healthcare management jobs include traditional fields such as nursing and physician’s assistant, but can also include medical secretaries and home and personal home health care aides.

Even if the U.S. finally joins the rest of the industrialized world by offering free, single-payer universal health care to all its citizens (by no means a foregone conclusion given the financial power of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries – but increasingly, a possibility with rising anger and frustration on the part of working Americans over a dysfunctional “for-profit” health care system), the job outlook should be unaffected. In fact, it is even likely to improve; contrary to corporate media propaganda, health care professionals in countries with socialized medicine enjoy a high standard of living and substantially greater job security as government employees than their U.S. counterparts.