Health Care Reform Means Millions of New Jobs

If you are wondering where your next job is going to come from, now might be a great time to look toward the field of health care.

According to a new report by the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center, health care reform could lead to 2.5 million to 4 million new jobs over the next decade. According to the report’s author, the more aggressively reform seeks to curtail health care premiums, the more jobs will be created.

And all this growth is on top of the one in eight Americans that are already working in the health care field. Health care is actually the single fastest growing industry in America today, with 10 of the 20 fastest growing occupations and more than $3 million new wages predicted to be generated over the next eight years.

Plus, if you are looking to change careers, health care doesn’t necessarily require an advanced degree — or even a traditional four-year degree. While diagnosing or treating patients obviously requires a high level of education (MD, DO or RN, typically), technical and administrative jobs do not.

To learn more about the many benefits of a health care career — including higher than average salaries, check out this week’s JobMonkey newsletter. You can also visit JobMonkey’s section on jobs in the healthcare industry, which profiles everything from physicians and dentists to midwives, naturopaths, and medical technologists.