This post will discuss the top healthcare careers in Q1 2015 as reported in the Q1 2015 Health eCareers Healthcare Jobs Snapshot: physicians, physician assistants/nursing roles, counseling and social services. The snapshot uses information from their online database of job openings placed by U.S. healthcare providers. Data for this snapshot was collected from January 1 to March 31, 2015 and includes data from 40,443 healthcare and medical job openings placed by 5,866 hospital and healthcare organizations.
The top 10 states with the most job postings were Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Washington, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia. Year-over-year increases from Q1 to 2014 to Q1 2015 in the number of Health eCareers job postings were achieved in counseling and social services (37%), physician assistant (27%), nurse practitioner (18%) and physicians (2%).
Physicians
Physician roles saw the largest number of job openings during the time of data collection — 53% of total postings. 46.7% of the physician jobs were new postings, an increase of 11% from Q1 2014. This area of growth includes physicians and surgeons. The most in-demand jobs were in general, family, emergency and internal medicine — 14% of the postings. The areas of greatest physician job opening growth from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015 were vascular surgery (21%), psychiatry (14%), neurology (9%), dermatology (7%) and hospitalist (7%). Growth in physician job openings is due in part to the Affordable Care Act — an estimated 28.2 million Americans are now covered by health insurance — in addition to the aging and growing populations.
Physician Assistant
Physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nursing job openings together accounted for 31% of job postings in Q1 2015 — 12,595 openings. Growth in these areas can be attributed to a shortage of physicians — advanced practitioners are now filling the gaps. Overall, Health eCareers employers reported that physician assistant and nursing roles were at the top of the 10 most in-demand non-physician positions list in Q1 2015.
Demand for physician assistants increased by 10% from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015 and 27% year-over-year. The top 5 physician assistant positions were in family, emergency, general, and orthopedic medicine and surgery.
Year-over-year demand increased for nurse practitioners from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015 — an 18% increase. The top 5 nurse practitioner job positions were in family, psychiatric/mental health, general, and emergency medicine and urgent care.
Additional Areas of Growth
Other areas of job growth include positions in counseling, social services, therapy, administration, allied health, pharmacy and executive roles.
Increased healthcare coverage, aging Baby Boomers and the physician shortage have all contributed to growth in these top healthcare careers and will continue to see growth over the next decade.
