An Incredible Streak Of Job Creation In The Healthcare Industry Recently Came To An End
Here's something we hadn't realized. In September, the healthcare industry actually shed jobs.
The healthcare industry has been a workhorse for job creation in America, which is not surprising given spiraling costs and demographics. Even through the Great Recession, the healthcare industry added workers every single month.
But as Dan Diamond at Advisory.com notes (via Morning Money), that streak came to an end in September. People didn't notice at the time, since the number of new jobs for the month only went negative after revisions.
Here's a chart of monthly jobs gains and losses going back over 10 years, and you can clearly see that this was the first month of losses in over a decade.
FRED
So watch this closely. One of the big sleeper stories in the US economy has been the recent decline in healthcare inflation. If we start getting more job losses in the sector, it would be a sign that it's becoming more "normal."