Healthcare careers and job opportunities have helped propel a Western Pennsylvania city beyond the doldrums of the recession, according to a published report.
Roughly 20 percent of all private sector employees in metropolitan Pittsburgh work at a hospital, the offices of a doctor or another locale that pertains to health services, the Los Angeles Times reports. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has helped drive the industry in this region of the Keystone State.
“This is the U.S. in a microcosm,” senior economist Eileen Appelbaum with the Center for Economic and Policy Research told the news source regarding how healthcare has boosted employment prospects and created opportunities.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, roughly 33 percent of all new jobs added to payrolls since June 2009 – when the economic recovery began – were germane to healthcare. Approximately 770,000 new healthcare jobs have augmented payrolls in the U.S. as the nation bounces back from the deepest, most trying economic struggle since the 1930s.
Healthcare costs are projected to be 6.9 percent higher this year than last year for a family of four, according to a Milliman Medical Index press release.