Health Care – Jobs. Trends. Insight.

Finance, Health Care, IT Stocks Lose Momentum as Hiring Slows

By Charles Thibault on February 2, 2010 in Business/Finance, Computer/Math/IT, Finance - XLF, Health Care, Health Care - XLV, Information Technology - XLK, S&P 500 - SPY.

Several stock market industry segments have taken hits over the past two or three weeks as the labor market situation deteriorated slightly during the second half of January.

Health Care stocks are down 2.9% over the last two weeks (XLV); Information Technologies stocks are down 9.5% over the last three weeks (XLK); and Finance stocks are down 7% over the last three weeks (XLF). The 4-week moving average of new unemployment insurance claims has gone up two weeks in a row.

Hiring in these three sectors – Finance, Health Care, and Information Technologies – has slowed in the past two weeks too, falling off the positive trend they started in September. What's worse, year-over-year hiring improvements have swung from positive to negative in these sectors.

The following analysis confirms a great Q4 in terms of GDP growth (+5.7% annualized), but also suggests that growth rates are slowing.

Let's first take a second to make sure we're not presenting conflicting information about the labor market situation, particularly compared to the Conference Board's Help Wanted Online series which uses the "same" data as we present here (HWOL). That series uses a "mid-month to mid-month" time-frame in order to match the BLS's sampling framework which measures national employment on the 14th day of each month. In early January, we did see some positive labor market signals. However, national Hiring Demand fell by 3.7% two weeks ago (after the HWOL sampling period closed). Since January 19th, the S&P 500 index has lost 4.3% too. This is after the S&P 500 gained 3.6% during the first couple of weeks of January on positive December UI claims data.

The following table compares year-over-year changes in sector Hiring Demand (the number of new online job ads) and weekly returns of sector Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). Sector ETFs are tradable securities which mimic the composition and returns of the different sector indices developed by Standard & Poor's. Sector indices are sub-components of the S&P 500.

Source: WANTED Analytics, Google Finance

Phoenix Great for Health Care Jobs, #1 in US for RN's

By Charles Thibault on November 3, 2009 in Health Care.

Phoenix, AZ is one of the best US markets for Health Care Practitioners, according to our Supply/Demand Ratios. What's more, Health Care workers are also "in-demand" in the Phoenix market. In other words, not only is Phoenix a great place for Health Care workers compared to other cities, but Health Care occupations also outrank other occupations within the Phoenix market.

Phoenix is ranked first in the US for Registered Nurses Hiring Demand (view our heat map and ranked market list for RN's). Registered Nurses are the second most important occupation in the United States (they carry an economic weight of $165 billion, second only to 'General and Operations Managers' who have an economic weight of $185 billion. 'Retail Salespersons' come in third at $110 billion). In August, Phoenix was ranked second after Las Vegas for RN Hiring Demand.

Remember that our Supply/Demand Ratios are constructed such that the number of online job ads is standardized against local occupational employment counts. (We'd expect larger markets to have more online job ads, so our S/D Ratios 'control' for market size).

FORECAST: September 2009 – Health Care Up 29,200

By Juli Morris on September 22, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Health Care.

WANTED's forecast for Health Care employment in September shows a gain of 29,200 jobs, the largest monthly gain since December 2008. WANTED Technologies' Hiring Demand Indicator (the yellow line in the chart below) for Health Care showed a slight decrease in September.

Click chart to view full size

The Health Care Hiring Demand Indicator–a measure of year-over-year change in online job advertising–dropped slightly this month from -15 percent to -16 percent. Hiring Demand for Health Care reached its three-year peak in June 2007, prior to the onset of the recession in December 2007, and moved steadily downward until reaching a bottom in the first quarter of 2009. Following a gain of 10 percent in June, Hiring Demand in this sector has remained flat.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its Preliminary September Estimate for the Health Care sector as part of its Employment Situation report on Friday, October 2, at 8:30 AM.

For more charts, graphs and forecasts, visit our BLS Forecast page.

Forecast July 2009 – Health Care up 28,600

By Charles Thibault on July 28, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment, Health Care.

Based on slightly improving Hiring Demand for Health Care workers, WANTED forecasts an employment increase of 28,600 in the Health Care sector for July (BLS data series CES6562000101). The BLS will release industry-level employment figures on Friday, August 7th along with the Employment Situation.

Despite weakening Hiring Demand throughout 2009, the Health Care industry has remained fairly robust, adding an average 26,000 workers per month over the last year.

The year-over-year change in Hiring Demand for Health Care is now -14.4%, a relative improvement of 2.35% compared to last month. The BLS reported an increase in Health Care employment of 20,800 in June. Recent improvements in Hiring Demand in this industry are driving our forecast of 28,600.

Click chart to view full size