New direct-care workers in training

Two direct-care occupations — home health aide and personal and home care aide — top the list of both the fastest-growing jobs and the occupations expected to generate the most new positions in the U.S. economy over the next decade, according to projections released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants also make the list of the top ten positions with the largest projected job growth.

Surpassing 3.2 million jobs in 2008, projected demand for direct-care workers calls for an additional 1.1 million new positions by 2018 due to economic growth alone.

Ensuring Quality Jobs

In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz said that a greater focus should be put on improving the quality of low-wage occupations, such as direct-care jobs, in order to make them more attractive to job-seekers.

“[By] professionalizing those types of jobs, we could have a very optimistic vision of an economy,” he said. More robust training would boost the quality of those jobs, eventually leading to higher wages for direct-care jobs and other low-paying positions, he said.

PHI Examines State-by-State Demand

A just-released PHI resource — State-By-State Projected Demand for New Direct-Care Workers (pdf) — uses data collected from individual state labor departments to break down the demand for direct-care jobs by state over the period 2006-2016. It shows that California will need the most new direct-care jobs by 2016, followed by Texas and New York.

State projections for the period 2008-2018 are likely to be available in about a year’s time.