Employment gains made in New York’s home health care industry were responsible for the recovery of the city’s overall health care jobs market between 2002 and 2008, according to an analysis published in the September 2009 issue of Monthly Labor Review.

“Home health care was the real jobs machine in New York City” during that time period, writes Bureau of Labor Statistics economist Martin Kohli, the author of the article (pdf).

After averaging an annual increase of just 1.4 percent from 1995 to 2002, employment in New York’s health care industry grew by an average of 1.8 percent each year between 2002 and 2008.

The addition of more than 24,700 home health care jobs during that timeframe was largely responsible for that overall increase, Kohli writes.

Kohli offers several reasons for the growth in home health care jobs. Chief among them is New York’s rapid population growth, which began in the late 1990s and continued throughout the 2000s.

Those jobs, however, are among the health industry’s lowest-paying. The average home health aide, for example, earns just $18,421 a year.