Health care is driving the economy

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/business/economy/health-care-hiring-labor-market.html

Health Care Has Become the Lifeblood of the Labor Market

An aging population is drawing workers to medical and social care, creating reliable jobs and revealing weakness for the rest of the economy.

By Lydia DePillis, The New York Times, Published March 6, 2026

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The industry, and related professions in the social assistance category, added 693,000 positions last year. Without it, the economy would have lost 570,000 jobs, as business and professional services, retail, the federal government and manufacturing all contracted…

Driven by changes in consumer spending and expanding access to insurance as well as the aging population, the health and social assistance sector went from 8.3 percent of total employment in 1990 to nearly 15 percent today, compared with about 8 percent for manufacturing…

35 percent of medical workers in New York State are immigrants. The Trump administration has squeezed avenues for workers to come in from overseas, including doctors on H-1B visas, who are particularly important for rural clinics, as well as the millions of people with temporary protected status… [end quote]

How can a country that has a growing trade deficit continue to prosper when the fastest growing sectors cater to non-producers?

How can a country with a rapidly aging population take care of them when the immigrants who do the jobs are blocked?

Wendy

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Send the rapidly aging population to where the immigrants come from? That is one of the reasons a lot of my neighbors moved here to Mexico from the USA — to live in a place where getting cold hearted robots to look after sick people is laughably absurd. Most hospitals in Mexico are designed to have family members, from an 8 year olds on summer break to tough old grannies, providing powerful emotional and physical support to the folks in the beds. The expensive hospitals make use of the same potent free resource, and I have spent a few nights in local hospitals looking after friends.

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There are plenty of American born workers in need of jobs. If they were not workers to begin with then they will be workers.

This we only do the lovely work is a myth.

If we want immigration we need to manage to see all of them documented or not are paid and taxed.

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Our nation has long catered to, and advantaged, the “non-producers” – those living off lightly-taxed investment income and completely tax-free inherited wealth with the stepped-up cost basis.

The dumbest thing you can do in America is to work for wage & salary income.

intercst

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