By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that it had inadvertently overstated—by more than 100%—the number of new jobs created across the United States during the last full year of the Biden/Harris Administration.
The BLS also noted that corrected industry and state-specific numbers won’t be available until early next year, although no changes are expected to previously published numbers for new jobs created in the “Health Care & Social Assistance” and “Government” industry categories.
The overstatement means that the number of new jobs reportedly created in Colorado since the start of the current post-COVID economy (January 2023) will likely end up lower than the published 78,900, although just how much lower won’t be known until February 2026.
Irrespective, Colorado is in the midst of a massive reallocation of resources. Since January 2023, 38.8% of all net new jobs reportedly created in the state have been in the health care & social assistance industries, and a further 21.9% in the state government sector.
(And so far this year, Colorado’s health care & social assistance industries have created a whopping 45.3% of all net new jobs in the state—and Colorado’s state government a budget-busting 30.9%.)
Putting this into perspective, currently 11.6% of all employees in Colorado now work for a business or organization involved in the health care & social assistance industry—up from 10.8% in January 2023 and 7.7% in January 2001.
Some 5.1% of all Colorado workers now work for the Colorado state government, up from 4.6% in January 2023 and 3.8% in January 2001.
The huge share of new jobs being added in health care & social assistance in Colorado over the last 32 months is comparable to the pattern observable in the rest of the nation, where employment in this sector has increased by 35.9%.
(The growth in Colorado state government workers is not comparable, so we will review and discuss that in another article.)
Presumably, the massive co-opting of new workers into expanding health-related fields is a response to both the nation’s mental-health crisis and the fact that Americans are less healthy than citizens of every other peer Western nation—despite spending more per capita on health-related care than anyone else.
Detailed national BLS data highlight the individual industry clusters inside health care & social assistance. While this level of detail isn’t, sadly, available on a state-by-state basis, the overall trend is likely applicable to Colorado and illustrates how some clusters have been growing rapidly—and some not—as priorities shift.
Several health care and social assistance industry clusters have shed jobs since January 2023. Among them: chiropractors (overall employment declined by −1.1%); podiatrists (−3.7%); kidney dialysis centers (−3.9%); emergency centers (−2.7%); medical labs (−7.8%); and blood & organ banks (−2.2%).
A large number of health care and social assistance industry clusters added employees at a relatively rapid pace.
Among them: offices of doctors focused on mental health (+17.2%); offices of mental-health practitioners who aren’t doctors (+46.9%); outpatient mental-health and substance-abuse centers (+14.4%); family-planning and other outpatient centers (+15.2%); home-health care services (+16.0%); skilled-nursing care facilities (+13.3%); residential developmental-disability/mental-health/substance-abuse facilities (+13.2%); child & youth services (+13.8%); services for the elderly & persons with disabilities (+27.1%); and community housing, emergency & relief services (+13.0%).
The nation’s seemingly unsolvable mental health crisis is driving much of this new employment—in partnership with on-going and perennial substance abuse issues alongside the challenges of managing an aging and less healthy elderly population.
What really boggles my mind, though, is this: with such incredibly rapid growth since January 2023, when will enough new health care & social assistance workers be enough?
The population isn’t growing anywhere near the same pace. Sooner or later, it’s inevitable that this fast-flowing hiring spigot will slow and then turn off—probably at the same time the long-predicted AI transformation of the health-care industry kicks in. When that happens, this current health care & social assistance employment bubble will surely pop.
And just like the dot-com bubble bursting in March 2000, the ramifications will be felt everywhere—although ill-prepared states like Colorado, just as in 2000, will suffer through the economic downturn that will inevitably follow more so than other states.
It also goes without saying, so I will: every new health care & social assistance worker employed somewhere in the economy adds something to the cost of health insurance and/or out-of-pocket medical costs for everyone else, redirecting resources from other industry and employment sectors.
We continue to live in interesting times…
Mike O’Donnell is a small business advocate, nonprofit executive and economic development leader based in Kirk, Colorado. He currently serves as Executive Director of Prairie Rose Development Corp., a mission-driven lender supporting underserved entrepreneurs across the state.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.
