Best employment prospects for healthcare professions
Press release 20 December 2011
Despite poor economic prospects for 2012, employment growth is expected to average 0.4% per year until 2016. This is particularly true of the (para) medical, healthcare and service professions. Lower-educated workers in such professions are expected to benefit most from this employment growth, assuming that this growth is not thwarted by new budget cuts. This is according to a report published today by the UM Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) entitled The labour market by education and occupation to 2016.
New jobs are created when employers feel the need to expand their workforce. Until 2016, this stance will only apply to a limited extent to professions outside the healthcare sector. Vacancies can also arise when (older) employees leave the labour market or switch jobs and must be replaced by new employees with comparable qualifications and experience. Nine out of ten vacancies will arise as a result of an average annual replacement demand of 4% until 2016. This is particularly true for the transportation and agrarian sectors, and less so for the ICT sector.
Prospects for school leavers
Until 2016, the average annual labour inflow of school leavers is expected to be (3.5%) lower than the percentage of job vacancies (4.1%). According to ROA, this difference will generate good to excellent job prospects for one-third of school-leavers. The best prospects are expected for graduates from healthcare and technical programmes such as science and technology programmes at intermediate and higher vocational levels (MBO and HBO) and mechanical engineering at the higher vocational and university levels (HBO and WO).
Excellent prospects are expected at all academic levels in the healthcare sector due to an increasing demand for healthcare. A high replacement demand and a low transition rate from school to workplace also explain the goodexpected prospects for preparatory vocation level employees (VMBO) working in the healthcare sector. A similarly high replacement demand is expected for university educated employees in the healthcare sector. Employers in the healthcare and technology sectors can therefore expect significant staffing problems in the coming years. A relatively large influx of school leavers from economics programmes will only serve to aggravate labour prospects at all academic levels in the years to come.
Promising occupations
The most promising career prospects are reserved for nursing aids, student nursing aids, registered nurses, nursing assistants, doctor’s assistants, therapists, physicians and medical analysts. Employers in the healthcare sector may encounter significant staffing problems for lower-level healthcare and service occupations (such as nursing assistants).
Within the technical and industrial sectors, staff shortages are expected to increase for technical analysts, mechanical engineers, civil and hydraulic engineers and graphic designers. As regards the academic professions, significant staffing problems are expected to arise for primary school teachers as well as those in the science and medical, agriculture and engineering (2nd level) and language and literature disciplines (1st level and university level). Within the agricultural sector, it will be difficult to find sufficiently skilled agrarian workers, environmental hygienists, agricultural representatives and agrarian business directors.
Part-time jobs
Implementing a policy aimed at increasing the hours of part-time workers in the technical profession will bring about very limited improvements to the expected shortages. Conversely, the shortage of trained healthcare professionals can be remedied by increasingthe working hours of employees with a short working week. For example, if all intermediate trained healthcare professionals were given part-time positions for at least 24 hours per week, the staffing shortage in the healthcare sector could be reduced by 85%. Enforcing this 24-hour minimum will, however, require significant effort.
Note for the press:
‘The labour market by education and occupation to 2016’ article can be downloaded or ordered online via the ROA website (www.roa.nl).
For more information on the contents of this press release please contact Frank Cörvers or Didier Fouarge on 043 388 3647, or by email at frank.corvers@maastrichtuniversity.nl and d.fouarge@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
The UM Marketing and Communications can be contacted on 043 388 5222, or by email at pers@maastrichtuniversity.nl. For urgent matters outside office hours please call 06 4602 4992.
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