Last week’s jobs report delivered an unexpectedly strong result: Employers added 162,000 jobs in August. Health care was not responsible for the August blowout. The sector added just 13,000 jobs during the month, less than half its average monthly gain of 32,000 over the previous year. But looking beyond a single month reveals something more consequential: Health care has become one of the principal engines of U.S. job creation. This trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future – if the workforce can keep up. 

Health care employment rose from approximately 18.14 million in August 2025 to 18.52 million last month, an increase of nearly 379,000 jobs. Over the same period, total nonfarm employment grew by about 603,000. In other words, health care alone accounted for roughly three-fifths of net U.S. job growth over the past year – a striking figure that owes partly to weak hiring in other sectors but nevertheless illustrates how important it has become to the labor market. Ambulatory health care added roughly 219,000 jobs during that period, hospitals added about 101,000, and home health care added approximately 90,000. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projections from August anticipate that the trend will accelerate. Private health care and social assistance will add 2.2 million jobs between 2025 and 2035, more than any other major industry and roughly 37 percent of all projected U.S. job growth. Health care support occupations are expected to grow 13.3 percent, while health care practitioners and technical occupations are projected to grow 8 percent. 

Yet those numbers raise an important question. If health care employment is growing so rapidly, why does much of the country still appear to have a health workforce shortage? 

The answer: Adding health care jobs and adding enough health care capacity are not the same thing. Consider primary care. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projects that the United States could be short approximately 70,600 primary care physicians by 2038, including more than 39,000 family medicine physicians. Rural areas face a particularly severe challenge: HRSA projects primary care physician supply in nonmetropolitan areas will equal just 61 percent of projected demand, compared with 83 percent in metropolitan areas. 

At the same time, the composition of primary care is changing. BLS estimates nurse practitioner employment to increase 41 percent over the next decade, the fastest growth of any detailed occupation. HRSA, in fact, projects a national surplus of nearly 73,000 primary-care nurse practitioners by 2038. That does not mean the primary care problem disappears. It means that – while policymakers should pay attention to national headcounts – they should focus on where clinicians practice, what services different practitioners can provide, and whether health systems are using team-based models efficiently. 

The imbalance may be even clearer in long-term care. Home health employment has grown about 5 percent in just the past year, and BLS expects home health and personal care aides to add an extraordinary 847,000 jobs by 2035. Roughly 760,500 openings are expected every year as the industry both expands and replaces workers who leave. Yet the median annual wage for these workers was only $35,800 in 2025. 

Demand may still be moving faster. HRSA estimates that the workforce needed to provide long-term services and support will increase 40 percent between 2023 and 2038, from 2.35 million to 3.29 million full-time-equivalent workers. Demand for nursing assistants is projected to rise 44 percent, personal care aides by 38 percent, and home health aides by 36 percent. These are occupations characterized by relatively low compensation, difficult work, and high turnover, making the challenge not simply training new workers but retaining them. 

Similar problems appear elsewhere. HRSA projects national shortages of nearly 109,000 registered nurses and 246,000 licensed practical nurses in 2038, with these shortages substantially worse in nonmetropolitan communities. Behavioral health faces an even larger mismatch: Despite rapid projected employment growth, HRSA anticipates shortages approaching 100,000 mental health counselors, 100,000 psychologists, and 44,000 psychiatrists by 2038. Those estimates are particularly noteworthy because they largely reflect current utilization – not all of the unmet behavioral health need that already exists. 

Employers are already signaling that they want more workers. In July, health care and social assistance establishments reported approximately 1.44 million job openings, nearly one-fifth of the 7.27 million openings across the entire economy. 

The policy challenge, therefore, is not merely to create more health care jobs. It is to expand the number of qualified clinicians and increase the amount of effective care those workers can provide. That means addressing training bottlenecks where producing additional clinicians takes years, embracing immigration and increasing visa allotments, allowing appropriately trained practitioners to practice to the full extent of their capabilities, encouraging team-based care, improving the attractiveness and retention of long-term-care employment, and removing administrative requirements that consume clinicians’ time without improving patient care. 

Last week’s strong jobs report is good news for the economy, and health care’s longer-term contribution to employment growth is substantial. An aging population and rising demand for medical services are pulling more people into health care employment, and that trend is likely to continue. But the sector also demonstrates the limits of judging workforce health by payroll figures alone. The United States can add hundreds of thousands of health care jobs while still lacking enough primary care clinicians in rural communities, nurses at the bedside, aides providing long-term care, or professionals treating behavioral health conditions. The more important measure of success will not be how many jobs the sector creates, but whether those workers translate into enough clinical capacity to meet the care patients increasingly need.