CT Healthcare employment is slowly rebounding, except for nursing homes
Like other Connecticut workers, healthcare employment was hit hard by the pandemic in March 2020, according to data from the CT Department of Labor. Since then, hospital employment has partially rebounded but not in nursing and residential facilities.
At its start, the COVID pandemic sharply increased demand in a few healthcare sectors to care for COVID patients, while other sectors declined as non-COVID care was delayed. That began to change in the summer of 2020; by October healthcare had recovered 21,000 jobs. However, that trend reversed last winter losing 2,300 jobs last December. This year total healthcare employment has grown very slowly. Between January 2020, before the pandemic, and this September, total healthcare employment in Connecticut is still down 9,700.
Not all healthcare sectors were hit equally by the pandemic. Hospital employment has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, up 200 jobs from January 2020. But employment in nursing and residential facilities never rebounded and this September were down 8,300 workers (13.7%) from January 2020.
Healthcare jobs have not rebounded from pandemic losses as well as total Connecticut jobs, lagging 1.5% behind total state employment (-3.1% total, -4.5% healthcare). However nursing and residential facility jobs have taken most of those losses.
