The Engine of US Jobs

eberta writes, "BusinessWeek has an interesting take on the US job situation, What's Really Propping Up The Economy. I think many of us have felt the US tech job market was stagnant and this article has insights into why this economy is so hot, yet not from our perspective. The spoiler is the business of health care — which will come as no surprise to anybody who has looked through the help wanted section lately. BusinessWeek has some opinions on how IT should play a bigger role in the health care industry."

Comments

Sick Economy

[Doc Ruby]

"Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago."

We had 283M people in 2001 and have over 297M now, 14M more people. But only 1.7M more jobs. 88% of the growth is jobless.

The medical industry just isn't meeting the challenge. We can't blame Bush for that, because he's maiming as many people in Iraq and Afghanistan as he can (numbers higher in secret CIA prisons).