US Q2 2024 Healthcare Labor Market Update: Therapy Job Postings Remain a Bright Spot
The Indeed Hiring Lab tracks Healthcare employment trends, analyzing the latest Indeed data. We examine overall labor market trends and dive deeper into job-posting trends in various Healthcare occupational categories. Finally, we dive into recent trends relating to employers’ advertisement of salary in job postings.
Takeaways:
- The overall labor market continues to moderate, with total job postings down 12.4% from July 5, 2023.
- Therapy jobs remain a bright spot in the labor market, one of the few categories still adding postings year-over-year.
- Wage growth is mostly consistent across healthcare categories, with the exception of Medical Technician and Therapy roles, which show considerable slowing.
Indeed job postings
The broad moderation in the labor market persisted through the second quarter. As of July 5, 2024, the Indeed Job Postings Index (JPI) was down 12.4% from the same time last year, and the labor market is nearing its pre-pandemic level after more than two years of near-continuous declines. The JPI stood at 111.7 on July 5, meaning that the total level of job postings nationwide is 11.7% above their pre-pandemic (Feb. 1, 2020) baseline.
Healthcare job postings
Demand for healthcare workers is relatively healthy (as is typically the case), with job postings in all categories above their pre-pandemic level. However, trends over the past year differ greatly across healthcare job categories. Therapy is one of the few categories in the labor market still adding job postings, and year-over-year declines in Physicians & Surgeon and Personal Care & Home Health job postings are more tepid than declines in the overall labor market. But job postings in the remaining healthcare categories — Pharmacy in particular — have fallen further than the 12.4% year-over-year decline observed in the broader labor market.
Healthcare wage growth
The Indeed Wage Tracker shows pay gains across the broader labor market leveling off, but a couple of Healthcare categories buck that trend. Wage growth for Medical Technician and Therapy postings continues to soften, down 1.7 and 1.8 percentage points, respectively, in the six months through June 2024. Annual wage growth in a few fields, including Dental and Personal Care & Home Health, is above the labor market average, at 4.8% and 3.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, year-year wage growth for Medical Technician, Therapy, and Nursing postings are all below the labor market average of 3.1%.
For more labor market insights from the Indeed Hiring Lab, visit us at hiringlab.org.
link