Unemployment and the Healthcare Industry

Without a doubt, one of the most secure sectors for employment is the healthcare industry.  The US has more healthcare professionals working inside its borders than many other European countries combined.  Human beings will always be breaking in one way or another, and society will always need professionals to put them back together again.  There are so many different occupations inside the health care industry; it’s tough to really pin down one or two in order to accurately represent the entire industry or even a single sector.

The Obama Administration’s push to reform the nation’s healthcare system has brought this topic to the front page of most newspapers and online news sources.  But those in the healthcare industry know full well that even though there may be healthcare reform in the shape of government subsidized health insurance and limitations on the insurance company’s abilities to charge premiums, the demand for healthcare professionals will always be quite evident.

Not only are doctors always in demand, RN’s, LPN’s, and others in the nursing field have quite good job prospects currently.  There is so much education involved in training doctors, and this education costs time and money, two precious resources that many people don’t have enough of already.  The insurance that doctors and health specialists are required to carry right now can even be cost prohibitive.  The monetary cost alone of opening up a private practice has discouraged many a doctor from doing so.  But nursing, with its smaller amount of required traditional education and insurance premiums has become an attractive occupation for many people looking to have a high level of job security and a good, solid paycheck.  At the end of the day a nurse can feel like they have made a difference, just as a doctor or specialist can say as well. 

Nurses have been in high demand for the past couple of decades, and as the population ages, and more and more boomers reach the age of 75, more and more healthcare professionals will be necessary to keep the US population healthy.  Other specialists will likely be in demand as well as the age of the population grows older.  Radiologists, lab technicians, and even health industry secretaries and administrative assistants will find that they don’t have to look far for work.

The world of dentistry however is a different story.  Many people can no longer afford to pay costly health insurance premiums or even pay cash for dentist visits.  Millions of cash-strapped Americans are sitting on their wallets, nursing their own toothaches and cavities and waiting for better economic times to fix their teeth cosmetically.  Just like the auto industry, dentistry will always be in demand, but people have learned that unless they require immediate medical or dental assistance, it’s often not financially viable for them to fix their teeth in such a poor economic climate.  This climate has created a need for dentists to set themselves apart from the rest of their peers.  In short, they now face stiffer competition from their fellow dentists and have begun to try and attract and keep their patients using many different means.