Health care and social assistance to have largest share of total employment by 2024

The health care and social assistance industry is projected to increase its share of total wage and salary employment to 14.5 percent by 2024, up from 12.8 percent in 2014 and 10.8 percent in 2004. The share of employment represented by professional and business services is also projected to increase, rising from 12.3 percent in 2004 and 13.5 percent in 2014 to 13.9 percent in 2024.

The share of total wage and salary employment represented by manufacturing is projected to decline in the coming period, falling from 10.7 percent in 2004 and 8.6 percent in 2014 to 7.6 percent in 2024. The decline in manufacturing’s employment share is the largest of any industry sector for the 2014–24 period.

More from the the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

New Report Finds Retrenchment in State/Local Social Welfare Spending

Instinctively, this seems a logical result of belt tightening by states and localities, but it still shows the scary state of the "safety net". A new report entitled The New Retrenchment: Social Welfare Spending, 1977-2006 is now available on the Rockefeller Institute’s website. The report shows recent declines in social welfare spending — including cash assistance, medical assistance, and social services — as well as major shifts in the relationship between state fiscal capacity and social welfare spending. Read the news release.

The "Nonprofitization" of Social Services

"A new article by the Rockefeler Institute of Government's Roundtable on Religion and Welfare Policy reports on Congressional consideration of tax incentives for charitable giving, amidst new information about the federal government's increasing reliance on such charitable groups to deliver health care, education, and human services in America. That increase was reflected in more federal money to nonprofit organizations and a growth in the number of public charities, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. Researchers estimated that federal money to nonprofit organizations increased more than 230 percent from 1980 to 2004, when adjusted for inflation. And the number of registered public charities has grown more than 30 percent since 2000 from about 646,000 to 851,000. The new data confirm trends toward the "nonprofitization" of social services, the subject of research at the Rockefeller Institute by Richard Nathan and others."