The healthcare industry cut 97% more jobs in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, according to a July 6 report from executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas.
Healthcare companies, including health product manufacturers, cut 38,279 jobs in the first half of 2023, compared to 19,390 jobs in the first half of 2022, the report found. The healthcare industry ranked fourth among all industries in terms of the number of job cuts so far this year (unsurprisingly, tech ranked first, with a 2,353% increase in job cuts over last year).
The report mentioned an unnamed hospital that closed last month due to a cyberattack, which likely contributed to the healthcare job cuts. In June, St. Margaret’s Health in Spring Valley, Illinois, closed, and was the first hospital to publicly attribute a cyberattack to its closure, NBC News reported.
Market and economic conditions were cited as the reasons for the majority of job cuts across all US industries; the report didn’t detail the reasons for healthcare job cuts specifically.
The US hasn’t seen so many first-half job cuts since 2009, with the exception of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the report found. US employers have announced plans to add 115,462 jobs in 2023, the lowest total for the first six months of the year since 2016.
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