Healthcare job growth plummets in January, breaking down the numbers
Meanwhile, the Altarum Institute's preliminary estimates show that national health spending in 2016 grew by 5.4 percent.
Healthcare added just 18,000 jobs in January, and according to the Altarum Institute that's the lowest monthly increase since January 2014, which marked the onset of the expanded coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act. By comparison, the 12-month and 24-month average is 31,000 jobs added per month.
Benchmark revisions lowered the 24-month growth rate by nearly 15 percent, from 37,000 to 31,000. Health jobs grew 2.5 percent year over year, faster than the pace of non-health job growth, which was 1.5 percent.
With these changes, the healthcare share of total employment is at an all-time high of 10.73 percent.
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Meanwhile, the institute's preliminary estimates show that national health spending in 2016 grew by 5.4 percent. Broken down into the major categories, those growth rates stayed pretty consistent, ranging from a low of 5.0 percent for drugs to a high of 6.0 percent for physician and clinical services. Hospitals grew by 5.2 percent.
The overall 5.4 percent rate is higher than the rate of 4.8 percent projected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 2016, but below the 5.8 percent rate officially reported by CMS for 2015.
Healthcare prices in December 2016 grew 2.1 percent above the December 2015 level. Yet the 2016 average price growth of 1.7 percent shows a notable increase from the all-time low 2015 average of 1.1 percent. With economy-wide inflation no longer exerting downward pressure on the health sector, Altarum predicts that healthcare prices can be expected to modestly increase through 2017. In December, prescription drug prices led the way at 6.2 percent annual growth.
Twitter: @JELagasse
