The direct care workforce has added 1.5 million new jobs, going from 3.2 million to 4.7 million, over the past decade, according to a new report by PHI. Home- and community-based services direct care workforce growth is outpacing assisted living and nursing home workforce growth.
“This trend is expected to continue, with the direct care workforce projected to add approximately 1.2 million new jobs from 2020 to 2030 — more new jobs than any other single occupation in the country,” wrote the author of “Direct Care Workers in the United States: Key Facts.”
Among direct care workers, the segment of approximately 2.6 million personal care aides, home health aides and nursing assistants who work in private homes shows the greatest rate of job growth among direct care workers. The home care workforce is projected to increase by 37% in the next decade, according to the report.
The report includes data on three segments of the direct care workforce: home care workers, residential care aides working in assisted living and similar communities, and nursing assistants in nursing homes.
“When also accounting for jobs that must be filled when existing workers transfer to other occupations or exit the labor force, there will be an estimated 7.9 million total job openings in direct care from 2020 to 2030,” the report noted.
The future of the residential care aides workforce — those who assist individuals in assisted living communities, group homes and other residential care settings — is a little more difficult to predict, PHI noted, due to a recent drop in residential care employment. Still, the organization predicts that workers in this segment will increase by 22% over the next 10 years. Currently, there are 647,500 residential care aides in the United States.
Meanwhile, PHI predicts that the number of nursing assistants working in nursing homes will continue to decline from the 471,000 currently working in the field.
“These diverging trends across long-term care industries largely result from consumer preferences for home care and public policies that have expanded [home- and community-based services] funding and access,” according to the report.
Direct care workers often work part-time for wages, but wages are trending upward, even accounting for inflation, according to the report. PHI credited state and federal investments in Medicaid programs and the workforce for the change. The report noted, however, that the median hourly rate for direct care workers was $14.27 in 2021.
“As a result, long-term care employers are facing acute recruitment and retention challenges as they compete with employers from other industries that can offer higher wages in a fiercely competitive labor market,” PHI said.
