
Every Month a CPEG member will be posting a brief issue analysis for discussion and comments. This month, CPEG member Sharon Post has chosen to discuss the impact of health care employment on job creation and income inequality.
In 2009 CPEG released a paper calling for a massive public jobs program aimed at both relieving immediate suffering and redressing long-standing structural problems in the U.S. economy. We raised two often overlooked problems: (1) the inability of the private sector to create sufficient jobs at adequate wages and (2) the existing labor market’s reproduction of inequalities that have left the lower 40% income strata desperate and miserable. In light of those points, this discussion paper attempts to add to that earlier analysis some questions about employment in the health care sector. Given the importance of health care sector employment, especially in low-income communities where the hospital is the largest employer, this paper looks specifically at hospital employment and asks:
- What does it mean for job creation and income inequality that so many hospital jobs are low-wage jobs?
- What will changes in the health care delivery system, stimulated by the ACA and other reforms, mean specifically for the low-wage hospital workforce?
- Can a jobs program such as the one CPEG has proposed take on both the need for good jobs and the need for better health access in low-income communities?



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