Boston healthcare jobs cut

Posted on October 7, 2013

Even though the national rate for cutting jobs is lower, Boston healthcare jobs are still being cut. For the third time in the last five months, the health care sector was the leading announcer of job cuts, with reported layoffs totaling 8,128, according to the jobs report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Planned job cuts fell to their lowest level in three months, as U.S.-based employers announced plans to reduce payrolls by 40,289 in September. That was down 20 percent from August, when job cuts reached a six-month high of 50,462.

The September total was 19 percent higher than the 33,816 planned job cuts announced the same month last year. This marks the fourth consecutive month that saw heavier job cutting than a year ago.

Overall, 128,452 planned cuts were announced during the three month period ending September 30, compared to 102,910 over the same stretch last year. The third-quarter total was 13 percent higher than the second quarter, when 113,891 job cuts were announced.

The healthcare sector has now announced 41,085 job cuts in 2013, which is 13.4 percent more than the 36,212 health care job cuts announced in all of 2012.

“The health care sector is adjusting workforce levels due to cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements initiated under the Affordable Care Act as well as overall reductions in federal spending due to sequestration. A prime example of this occurred last month, when the Cleveland Clinic announced plans to reduce its headcount by 3,000, accounting for more than one-third of the health care cuts during the month. It attributed the cuts to lower government payments under health care reform,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“Many of the recent banking cuts have been concentrated in the mortgage business. A couple of trends are happening here to help drive up job cuts. Many banks brought in extra workers in their mortgage departments to help deal with the large number of foreclosures. The number of foreclosures is now shrinking, which is eliminating the need for these extra workers.
Additionally, recent upticks in interest rates have lowered demand for refinancing, which, in turn, is lowering the need for workers to process these transactions,” noted Challenger.