The bright and not-so-bright spots in healthcare hiring

Modern Healthcare – Thursday, August 7, 2025
By Hayley DeSilva

Healthcare was the bright spot in July’s anemic jobs report — with job gains outperforming every other industry measured — but compared with last year the picture isn’t quite as rosy.

The industry added 55,000 jobs last month, which is higher than the average monthly gain of 42,000 during the past year, according to Friday’s report from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That said, the enthusiasm is tempered when you do the math. In the January-July period, healthcare employers added 249,000 jobs, compared with 407,700 jobs in the year-ago period. That equates to a 1.4% gain this year versus a 2.4% gain last year. The monthly report could be revised.

Here’s what to know about who’s hiring — and who isn’t.

Hospitals appear eager to hire

Hospitals added 16,000 jobs in July, better than the month before. However, they added an estimated 20,000 jobs in July 2024.

Worker burnout, higher retirement rates and a growing, increasingly sicker population have created a need for clinical staff. However, hospitals and health systems are developing strategies, including the use of artificial intelligence, to shrink their administrative teams.

Recent legislative changes, including stricter immigration laws that have prevented hospitals from employing healthcare workers from other countries, have also driven hospital recruitment.

Other employers are adding workers too

Among other kinds of healthcare employers, ambulatory health care services continue to be an area of significant growth this year, adding nearly 34,000 jobs in July. That’s the most jobs added in one month since October. Those jobs are in physician, dentist and other health practitioner offices, as well as outpatient centers, medical and diagnostic laboratories, home health and other, undefined ambulatory health care services.

Employment in nursing care facilities was higher in July than in any month in the past year. For the January through July period, it’s up 2.5% year-over-year.

Physician job growth is holding pat, outpatient centers see a dip

The employment growth rate for office physicians is nudging up slowly and keeping pace with last year — the 1.4% gain for the first seven months of the year was the same as last year.

July saw a small monthly gain in jobs at outpatient care centers, but it paled in comparison to the job growth recorded for July 2024, and the same can be said for the year-over-year first seven months of 2025.

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