Healthcare jobs bounce back after COVID-19, but some sectors still struggling
Research shows overall healthcare employment has fully recovered from pandemic lows by 2024; office-based behavioral health surges 84%
The United States healthcare workforce has bounced back from the massive job losses of early 2020, with employment now matching pre-pandemic projections, according to new research from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. But the recovery is far from even—while some healthcare settings are thriving, others continue to struggle with severe staffing shortages.
The research letter, led by Thuy Nguyen and published in JAMA, analyzed employment data from 2016 through 2024 to track how different healthcare sectors recovered from the pandemic's impact. The findings reveal a tale of two recoveries.
"Our research provides timely evidence on the pandemic's impact on healthcare workforce and its subsectors," said Nguyen, the John G. Searle Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at Michigan Public Health.
Healthcare employment dropped by nearly 7% in the second quarter of 2020 due to the pandemic-related shutdowns. By 2024, however, healthcare jobs had bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, reaching over 24 million jobs as of September 2024.
This healthcare employment recovery stands in sharp contrast to other industries. Non-healthcare employment fell more dramatically during the early pandemic—dropping over 11%—and has been much slower to recover, still remaining about 3% below expected levels in 2024.
But the recovery within healthcare has been uneven. While doctors' offices have exceeded pre-pandemic employment growth trends since 2023, skilled nursing facilities and intensive behavioral health centers are still dealing with staffing shortages that began during the pandemic.
One of the most striking findings involves mental health services. Office-based behavioral health practitioners—like therapists and counselors working in private practice settings—saw their employment numbers skyrocket by 84% from 2019 to 2024. Meanwhile, intensive behavioral health facilities that provide more comprehensive mental health and substance abuse treatment have struggled to rebuild their workforce.
"The findings on behavioral health practitioners are significant and can guide policy changes in response to the rise of office-based practitioners amid a prolonged shortage in more intensive care settings that began during the pandemic," Nguyen said.
This research builds on Nguyen's previous work, which first identified that nursing homes were among the hardest hit by healthcare employment declines during the pandemic. Her earlier 2023 study found that long-term care facilities were still operating with staffing levels more than 10% below pre-pandemic numbers.
The new findings suggest several factors may explain why some healthcare settings recovered better than others. Office-based practices may have been seen as lower-risk environments for COVID-19 transmission and offered less stressful working conditions compared to hospitals and nursing homes. The growth in demand for office-based mental health services through traditional and telehealth platforms likely contributed to the expansion of office-based mental health services.
"For patients and families, these employment patterns have real-world implications," said Kosali Simon, the Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor in Health Economics at Indiana University and a co-author of the paper. "The continued staffing challenges in nursing homes and intensive mental health facilities could affect access to care and quality of services in these critical healthcare settings."
The research used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and compared actual employment numbers to what would have been expected if pre-pandemic trends had continued uninterrupted.
Additional co-authors include Christopher Whaley from Brown University School of Public Health and Jonathan Cantor from RAND.
Research letter: Health Care Workforce Recovery After the End of the COVID-19 Emergency
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