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Healthcare has remained a resilient sector for employment in July despite the broader labor market showing further signs of slowing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
Healthcare and social support added 73,300 jobs last month, causing the growth of every group at the time to be far apart. As with some economists, if we include private education in our healthcare groups, that growth would have increased to 79,000 that month.
Non-farm salaries increased 73,000 in July. That is, healthcare accounts for almost all of these benefits as it declines from other spaces with work in mind. Put another way, last month’s employment report was generally negative when healthcare groups were excluded.
“If you’re basically supporting both private pay governments and governments to work here, in order for local governments to drop out of jobs that they previously helped in their June participation, you have to say that you’re basically frozen,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, told CNBC. “It’s a rarely employed, no-employment employment market.”
Seeing a sudden downward revision in June and May, the former was revised from 147,000 to an increase of 14,000, while the latter fell from 144,000 to just 19,000. These changes indicate that employment growth has been quietly decreasing for several months. Still, there are some areas that are growing.
The BLS said the trend in social assistance rose at around 21,000, demonstrating “continuous employment growth for individual and family services.” Growth in walking healthcare services and hospital employment growth was equally strong, rising by 34,000 and 16,000.
The total figures for healthcare and social assistance were 57,600 higher than retail, with the second most added. The group added 15,700 jobs that month.
A close delay in retail was financial activities, a category that earned 15,000 profits.
In contrast, over half of the group decreased during the monthly period. Of the seven of the 13 receding sectors, experts and business services led the way, dropping 14,000 in payroll.
The government sector, which initially strengthened its profits in June, took over 10,000 jobs in July.
Other notable categories, such as manufacturing and wholesale, have jumped alongside government and professional and business services. Manufacturing lost 11,000 positions and wholesale industry fell at 7,800.
“This report definitely has a red flag,” Hamrick said. “There’s another employment report coming before the mid-September (Fed) meeting, and I think we’ll be scrutinizing the landscape (the data landscape and anecdotal landscape) to see if the story of this speed of economy is more consistent.”
