Chart of the Day, Part 2

This chart is from Jared Bernstein, using an interactive graphic from the Washington Post (h/t Mark Thoma):

It shows the change in employment from the runup to the Great Recession until the present, in various job sectors.  I was curious what the roller coaster line was which goes above the Health and education sector early, then drops way down, then comes back down.  Turns out that it is the Mining and logging sector, which is a fairly small sector of total jobs.  The manufacturing and construction lines are interesting, and professional services is interesting, personally.  That sector has shown a trend of increased hiring for a while, but total jobs are still well below pre-Recession levels.

Bernstein makes the following note about the Health care and education sector:

I didn’t bother labeling every sector because I just wanted to make one simple point.  Look at health care/education (which is driven by health care).  Even throughout the worst recession since the Great Depression, with payrolls tanking worse than I’d ever seen, HEALTH CARE ADDED JOBS EVERY SINGLE MONTH.
The graph makes the point…um…graphically.  It’s a straight line sloping steadily up amidst all that carnage!
So there’s the other hint.  This is a sector with great demand, tough to outsource, strong gov’t involvement (and yes, unsustainable spending—and that’s not solely a public sector issue; it’s just as bad on the private side), and limits to productivity growth, relative to say, widget production.

As he mentions, this is one of the reasons why health care costs in the United States are unsustainable compared to any other industry, labor costs keep increasing.  Other sectors have cut jobs and wages over the past twenty years, but health care hasn't, and all those costs are passed on to the rest of society.  With an aging population, we will continue to need more workers, but we need to figure out how to limit cost increases while continuing to provide good health care outcomes (actually, to improve those outcomes).  This will be our greatest political challenge going forward.