Jan 7 2010
Health care jobs, especially in nursing, dominate the country's employment future in the next decade. NPR reports that "[m]ore than 3 million jobs in the health care industry will be created this decade, ranging from highly paid neurosurgeons to home health aids making barely above minimum wage. And more nursing jobs will be created in the next decade than in any other single profession.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that nearly 600,000 new jobs for registered nurses will be created by 2018. You can get an entry-level registered nurse job with just three years of college. And [Roger Moncarz, who does employment projections for the Bureau of Labor Statistics] says the median wage for a registered nurse is $62,450, putting it among the highest wage-earning professions" (Keith, 1/6).
This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente. |