The Health of Nations

Business Week has an eye-popping cover story that analyzes what’s happened in the U.S. labor market over the past five years. The punchline: Since 2001, the health care sector (which includes pharma and health insurance companies) has added 1.7 million jobs. The rest of the private sector has added . . . uh . . . no jobs. Amazing.

Other interesting tidbits from this must-read story:

— “Perhaps most surprising, information technology, the great electronic promise of the 1990s, has turned into one of the biggest job-growth disappointments of all time. Despite the splashy success of companies such as Google and Yahoo!, businesses at the core of the information economy — software, semiconductors, telecom, and the whole gamut of Web companies — have lost more than 1.1 million jobs in the past five years. Those businesses employ fewer Americans today than they did in 1998, when the Internet frenzy kicked into high gear.”

— “Take away health-care hiring in the U.S., and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher.”

— “If current trends continue [They never do, but this is interesting anyway — ed.], 30% to 40 % of all new jobs created over the next 25 years will be in health care.”

— “Health care has taken over the role manufacturing used to play in providing opportunities for less skilled workers to move up.”