The healthcare sector has emerged as a lifeline for struggling job seekers in the United States. After six years as a stay-at-home mother, Cynthia Webster, 50, decided to reenter the workforce and found a job as a certified nursing assistant through a six-week training course at her local hospital in Palm Bay, Florida.

Job Opportunities in Healthcare

The healthcare industry is experiencing a surge in hiring due to the country’s aging population and the necessity of healthcare services. Many industries, including healthcare, have helped drive the pickup in US job growth in recent months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Healthcare recruiters have noticed an increase in people pivoting into the industry to take jobs with a lower barrier to entry, such as nursing assistants and home health aides. Non-healthcare jobs in the industry, such as IT technicians and marketing specialists, are also growing steadily.

The Place for Children with Autism, an autism therapy center in the Chicago metropolitan area, began offering a revamped training program this year for registered behavior technicians to address persistent vacancies. The program, which doesn’t require prior healthcare experience, has received over 10,000 applications so far.

Training Programs and Job Openings

UCHealth, a health system based in Colorado, currently has dozens of job openings that have nothing to do with healthcare, ranging from accounts payable analyst to HVAC mechanic. The system also offers training for employees who want to move up or pivot into patient-facing healthcare jobs, such as nursing.

Many new healthcare workers from 2020 to 2023 came from non-healthcare roles or after returning to the workforce, according to a study published in Medical Care Research and Review. This trend has persisted in recent months, according to data from jobs site Indeed, specifically for jobs like phlebotomist and medical billing specialist.

Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.