BY STEPHEN CAMPBELL, PHI
In a recent conversation, a state labor economist from Pennsylvania casually mentioned to me that every state has added new measures of “occupational separations” to their employment projections. I was intrigued: What are occupational separations? Did the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figure out how to measure turnover?
PHI has historically presented job growth as the best metric of future demand for direct care workers. Growth figures deserve our attention, as I’ll explain below. But growth alone tells an incomplete story because long-term care employers often struggle to fill their existing positions due to high turnover.
Could our methodological limitation be resolved with this new measure from the BLS? To answer this question, I spoke with BLS labor economists and pored over their methodological guidance. I learned that yes, the new separations data do offer a more complete picture of expected employment trends over the next decade. And when I analyzed these data for the direct care workforce for the first time, the results were startling. Let me explain why.
KEY FINDINGS
- The BLS projects there will be 7.8 million direct care job openings from 2016 to 2026: 3.6 million workers will leave the labor force, 2.8 million workers will leave the field for other occupations, and 1.4 million new positions will be created due to rising demand.
- The direct care workforce will grow more than any single occupation in the country.
- From 2016 to 2026, the direct care workforce will add the greatest number of new jobs (as compared to other occupations) in 38 states.
