Every state added private health-care and social-assistance jobs in 2025

Every state and the District of Columbia recorded a higher annual-average level of private health-care and social-assistance employment in 2025 than in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

California had the largest numerical increase, adding 155,635 annual-average jobs. New York added 65,221 and Florida added 53,142. Together, those three large states accounted for 273,998 of the 780,017 jobs in the state-and-D.C. sum.

Quick read

• All 51 state and D.C. rows showed positive year-over-year change; none was suppressed in the selected private-sector NAICS 62 rows.
• California's 155,635-job increase was the largest numerical gain and represented 5.5% growth from its 2024 annual average.
• The 51-row sum was 780,017, six below the separately published U.S. increase of 780,023. The tiny difference is consistent with rounding in independently published annual averages; the extract does not establish its precise cause.
• The combined sector includes social assistance as well as health care, and an industry job is not the same thing as a clinical occupation or a unique worker.

Growth reached every state

The breadth is the central finding. State labor markets differ in population, provider mix, age structure, and economic conditions, yet every selected row moved upward in the annual-average comparison.

Large states naturally dominate numerical changes. California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania had the five largest increases. That list should not be read as a performance ranking: a numerical gain is strongly influenced by the size of the state's existing payroll base.

Percentage change tells a different part of the story, but small bases can make percentages volatile. The analysis therefore preserves both the published numerical and percentage changes rather than declaring a single “best” state.

What the sector includes

NAICS 62 combines health care and social assistance. It includes ambulatory health-care services, hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities, and social assistance. A state-level increase can come from any combination of those industries.

The measure classifies a job by the establishment's primary activity, not the employee's occupation. A software engineer on a hospital payroll appears in the hospital industry; a nurse working for a non-health-care staffing firm may appear elsewhere. Someone holding two payroll jobs can be counted twice.

Why annual averages are useful

Monthly surveys provide faster signals, but QCEW draws primarily from unemployment-insurance records and covers the great majority of payroll employment. Annual averages reduce the influence of a single noisy month and make state comparisons less sensitive to seasonal timing.

The tradeoff is timeliness. QCEW arrives later than monthly employment estimates and can be revised. It also cannot explain why employment changed. Population growth, demand, reimbursement, facility expansion, staffing models, and industry reclassification can all contribute.

A planning signal, not a shortage measure

Recruiters can use broad state growth to identify markets where employer payrolls expanded, then add occupation, wage, vacancy, and licensure data. Operators can compare the state picture with their own service lines and local market.

The numbers do not prove a workforce shortage, patient access, new facility openings, or successful recruitment. They measure annual-average jobs at covered private establishments in a combined industry sector.

Methodology and limitations

MedDataUSA retrieved BLS QCEW 2025 annual-average rows for NAICS 62. We selected private ownership (own_code 5), state-level aggregation (agglvl_code 54), the 50 states, and the District of Columbia. We used BLS-published annual-average employment and over-the-year changes and retained disclosure fields; none of the selected rows was suppressed.

The state-and-D.C. change sum differs from the U.S. row by six jobs. That is a 0.0008% reconciliation difference and is consistent with rounding in independently published annual averages, but the preserved files do not identify the precise cause; we did not force the totals to match. QCEW excludes some workers outside unemployment-insurance coverage, counts jobs rather than unique workers, and can revise prior values.

Sources

• BLS, Employment and Wages, Annual Averages 2025.
• BLS QCEW 2025 annual-average NAICS 62 extract.
• Reproducible preserved extract and analysis: the preserved internal analysis package.