April brought more underwhelming employment news for healthcare employment, with nursing homes and hospitals continuing to shed jobs.
Preliminary jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the number of jobs in healthcare dipped by an estimated 4,100 in April from the prior month, largely because the agency revised upward its preliminary March total by 19,100.
Although healthcare employment gains have been underwhelming in recent months, the industry's April employment total of 16 million jobs was still much higher than its 14.9 million jobs in April 2020, the height of the pandemic's first wave. Healthcare employment is down 542,000 since February 2020.
Hospital employment contracted by an estimated 5,800 jobs last month, although total employment in the sector was unchanged at 5.1 million. The BLS originally estimated that hospitals lost jobs in March, but has since revised that to an upward swing of 5,200 jobs.