2032 Employment Projections: Healthcare Jobs Dominate Fastest Growing Occupations

By Lainey Stalnaker, Data Analytics Writer

We continue our series on employment projections by exploring jobs in the healthcare sector. During the month of May as part of Healthcare Month, we highlighted healthcare workers and the many ways they contribute to our state.

In our last blog post on employment projections, we outlined where in the state we’re predicting the highest employment growth. In this installment, we reveal the first of a few major trends we expect to see in the job market—rapid growth of employment opportunities in the healthcare field. The healthcare industry is booming in South Carolina, and healthcare occupations are in higher demand every year. In February, we published a blog post on growth of South Carolina’s healthcare sector as a result of population aging, and we expect that trend to hold up across all 12 workforce development areas (WDAs – shown in the map below) over the next decade.

In every WDA, healthcare occupations make up a significant proportion of the fastest growing occupations.  In seven of 12 WDAs, healthcare occupations make up at least a third of the 20 fastest growing occupations. In the Santee-Lynches, Worklink, and Lower Savannah WDAs, 10 or more of the 20 fastest growing occupations are in the healthcare field. Figure 1 shows how many of the 20 fastest growing jobs in each WDA are healthcare occupations. 

Figure 2 compares the growth rates of the fastest growing healthcare occupations in the entire state of South Carolina. All ten exceed the average growth rate for all occupations, which is 11 percent. No job is projected to grow more rapidly across the state than nurse practitioners, which tops the list in seven WDAs and is in the top five in all others. The growth rate for this job ranges from 47 percent in the Upstate WDA, comprising Spartanburg, Union, and Cherokee Counties, to 69 percent in the Trident WDA, comprising Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester Counties. The statewide growth rate for nurse practitioner jobs is 61 percent. Other rapidly growing jobs include physician assistants, physical therapist assistants, hearing aid specialists, and home health and personal care aides.

A number of healthcare related jobs in other occupation groups are also projected to grow quickly, such as community health workers, health education specialists, and medical and health services managers, as well as postsecondary teachers for healthcare related fields, such as nursing instructors. 

Across the board, the healthcare field is showing a strong outlook for job growth over the next decade—and in all parts of the state. Return to our next installment for a look at what other types of jobs we expect to grow rapidly over the next decade.