PARTNERSHIP / INDUSTRY
About Industry
Today, our health care system in British Columbia treats every citizen regardless of race, gender, age, or condition. Health Care is publicly funded, meaning the government pays for many of the costs of providing health care services for all residents. The demand for health care and other support services is large and growing.
In fact, health care & social assistance was the province’s second largest employer in 2008, with 245,600 people working in this industry in 2008. Thirty-seven percent are employed by hospitals. Doctors’ and surgeons’ offices, medical labs, and offices of other health practitioners such as chiropractors, optometrists, and physiotherapists provide jobs for 27% of the workforce. Nursing homes and other residential care facilities employ 15% of the people working in this industry.
Furthermore, Thompson-Okanagan, Vancouver Island/Coast and, to a lesser extent, Cariboo, account for a bigger share of total employment in this industry than their share of the provincial workforce. However, Mainland/Southwest’s share is lower than its share of the total workforce in BC. This distribution of employment may be partly due to the age structure of the population. Health care needs tend to increase with age, so it is very likely that the demand for these services is somewhat greater in areas where there are more seniors, such as Thompson-Okanagan and Vancouver Island.
The need for health care & social assistance doesn’t vary a lot with the state of the economy. People become sick or use social services such as day care whether the economy is growing or contracting. As such, the unemployment rate in health care & social assistance is extremely low, averaging 2.6% between 1990 and 2008. By comparison, the average for all industries was three times higher, at 7.8%.