JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With job growth turning out to be much stronger than expected in March, there were three main categories where the hiring was mainly concentrated including health care and private education, leisure and hospitality, and government.
Those industries accounted for nearly 69% of hiring.
New federal data showed 303,000 new jobs were added in March. Economists had forecasted 200,000, so the number beat expectations.
“What it tells us is that, interestingly enough, that the US economy is extremely resilient, in spite of increased interest rates. We’ve had tremendous growth,” Certified Financial Planner Bert Costa said.
Healthcare showed the strongest job growth in the latest report, which created nearly a quarter (23.7%) of the new jobs in the U.S. economy.
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Ambulatory care and hospitals lead in job creation within the healthcare sector accounting for 72,000 jobs added in March.
UNF Director of Nursing Michelle Edmonds said this data is not surprising.
“It seems in this area, as soon as they build another hospital or clinic, they need staffing for that,” Edmonds said.
Edmonds is one of the people working to fill the need for healthcare jobs.
“We are definitely enrolling more students now than ever before in the history of our program here. We have been fortunate to receive state funding to allow us to do that. So we have hired over the last two years or so we’ve hired about 14 more faculty to teach our students, we’ve been able to double the enrollment for our program here,” Edmonds said. “So we are now being able to educate more nurses and graduate them and get them out into the workforce within usually a year and a half to two years.”
Edmonds said the healthcare field will be hiring for the foreseeable future.