The health care sector is a bright spot in the economy this year, driving nearly half of the nation’s employment gains, but economists and experts say immigration crackdowns and looming Medicaid cuts pose a threat to future job growth.
Employers added 487,000 jobs from January to August, according to the latest nonfarm payroll data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The health care sector accounted for 48% of that lackluster growth, expanding by about 232,000 jobs, even though the sector employs only about 11% of workers.
“On the labor side, health care growth is driving the economy,” said Stanford economics professor Neale Mahoney.
Economists say President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and cuts to public insurance programs threaten to dampen that growth. They could add unease about the economy and cause headwinds for the GOP in next year’s midterm elections. The health care sector is unusually dependent on foreign-born workers, while a new law trimming federal spending on the $900-billion-a-year Medicaid program is projected, based on a preliminary version of the bill, to trigger the loss of 1.2 million jobs nationwide, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
In recent years, health care job growth has been most pronounced in the home health sector, rising by nearly 300,000 jobs to 1.82 million workers from August 2019 to August 2025, as millions of older residents hire workers to visit and take care of them, Mahoney said. Job growth has also been strong at hospitals and doctors’ offices. Nursing homes and residential care homes posted weaker numbers from 2019 to 2025 amid an increase in the number of people using caregiving at home.
Some research indicates that health care job growth is not always good for the economy. For instance, a growing number of administrato …