Healthcare job losses in January signal that hiring slowdown continues

January employment numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that last year's remarkable slowdown in healthcare hiring is more than a fluke for a sector that's typically a bright spot even in bad times.

Healthcare employment declined by 400 jobs in January, according to preliminary federal data.

Officials revised their December healthcare figures from a loss of 6,000 jobs to a gain of 2,400, but the industry has typically added tens of thousands of workers each month, even during the economic slowdown.

“We may be entering a period of even greater slowdown of healthcare employment as we enter 2014,” said Ani Turner, the Altarum Institute's deputy director of the Center for Sustainable Health Spending.

The U.S. economy added 113,000 jobs in January, an increase of 0.1%, and the unemployment rate stood at 6.6%, a tenth of a percentage point lower than December. The biggest gains were in manufacturing and construction.

Hospital hiring, in particular, is showing a significant downward trend, declining for the second straight month in January, the preliminary data show. Hospitals employed 4,500 fewer workers in January after a decline of 4,700 jobs the prior month, based on revised figures.

Hospitals shed 400 jobs over the course of 2013, according to the revised full-year figures. Nursing homes, meanwhile, eliminated an average of 1,000 jobs a month in 2013 after adding an average of 1,800 a month for the past two decades, according to Altarum's analysis of BLS data.

Insurance expansion under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Turner said, “might be the force that starts to offset this seeming flattening growth in healthcare employment.”

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