Did You Know Healthcare Workforce Tops Census Employer List?

Despite ongoing shortage of nurses and other healthcare workers, the healthcare and social assistance sector accounted for the most employees, 22.1 million (15.8%) of 140 million total employees, and had the most annual payroll, $1.3 trillion (14.9%) of $8.6 trillion in 2022, according to the 2022 Economic Census released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The economic census is the U.S. government’s official 5-year measure of employer businesses in the United States. It provides the most comprehensive business and economic data available at the national, state and local levels – and serves as the benchmark for current economic measures, such as the Gross Domestic Product and Producer Price Index, according to the release.

“The 2022 Economic Census provides foundational information on the nation’s businesses and is a primary undertaking for the Census Bureau,” said Nick Orsini, associate director for Economic Programs, in the release. “For this cycle of the economic census, we combined years of experience conducting censuses with machine learning technology to create an adaptive collection instrument that helped respondents quickly and correctly identify their industry, products and services. The improved efficiencies this created in data collection resulted in more effective data review that directly contributed to our ability to produce these First Look estimates earlier than we have in the past.”

In 2022, the number of establishments with paid employees increased to just over 8 million, up from 7.6 million establishments in 2017 and 7.1 million establishments in 2012. These establishments employed 140 million employees with an annual payroll of $8.6 trillion dollars.