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Healthcare Is Driving Job Growth. Here’s What OR Leaders Should Know

Picture of Surgical Solutions Team

If you’ve felt like healthcare hiring hasn’t slowed down, you’re not imagining it.

Recent national labor data shows healthcare continues to drive U.S. job growth, accounting for a significant share of new jobs added in January, even as other sectors cool. Becker’s Hospital Review recently highlighted that healthcare added roughly 80,000 of the 130,000 new jobs nationally, reinforcing the industry’s role as the engine of the labor market.

At first glance, this sounds like good new:

  • More healthcare jobs
  • More demand
  • More stability

But for OR and SPD leaders, the reality is much more complicated.

hiring

Growth Doesn’t Always Mean Stability

While healthcare overall is expanding, hospital hiring has cooled compared to earlier pandemic peaks. This creates an interesting dynamic:

Healthcare is growing, but competition for experienced perioperative and procedural talent remains intense.

The reality:

  • The healthcare market is active.
  • The hiring pressure hasn’t eased.

What OR Leaders Are Feeling

Across operating rooms and sterile processing departments, the labor market trend shows up in subtle but real ways:

    • Recruiters reaching out to nurses and techs
    • Sign-on bonuses resurfacing
    • Staff weighing schedule flexibility over loyalty
    • Departments operating with thinner margins for error

Even if your team is stable today, the external market pressure is still there.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of registered nurses is projected to grow steadily over the next decade, with ongoing openings driven by retirements and sustained demand for care. This is a structural workforce shift.

And structural shifts change how ORs operate.

When staffing feels slightly fragile, workflow variability increases. Coverage gaps widen. Small breakdowns become more frequent. The pressure may not look dramatic, but it adds up.

The Hidden Impact on Throughput

Labor market dynamics have a ripple effect in the Operating Room. They affect:

    • OR turnover time
    • First-case on-time starts
    • Equipment coordination
    • Communication between OR and SPD

When teams are short-staffed or simply stretched, small breakdowns become more frequent. The result isn’t dramatic chaos. It’s a slight drift:

  • Five extra minutes here
  • Ten minutes there
  • A missed detail that snowballs into schedule compression

Over time, those minutes compound into capacity loss.

The Opportunity Inside the Pressure

Here’s the interesting part:

Healthcare’s dominance in the labor market reinforces something important:

These roles matter.

The OR matters.

Sterile processing matters.

The question for leaders isn’t whether healthcare jobs are growing. It’s how to answer this call by creating environments where teams want to stay, and perform consistently to:

  • Reduce unnecessary logistical burden
    • Support predictable workflow
    • Protect staff focus
    • Create stability inside external volatility

Because in a competitive labor market, retention becomes a strategy.

A Leadership Question Worth Asking

As healthcare continues to drive national job growth, OR leaders are operating in a very different labor environment than they were even five years ago. Demand is strong. Movement is constant. Competition for experienced nurses and techs isn’t going away.

This raises an important question:

Are we structured in a way that protects our teams from unnecessary friction?

Or are we relying solely on effort to get through the day?

In a tight labor market, stability becomes a competitive advantage. Recruitment matters. But even more importantly, is the daily experience inside the OR. When workflow is predictable, communication is clear, and logistical burdens are minimized, teams are more likely to stay engaged and focused.

Operational structure does not eliminate labor pressure. But it does determine whether that pressure disrupts performance or is absorbed without chaos.

And in today’s environment, that difference matters.

Healthcare may be driving national job growth. But inside the OR, performance still comes down to predictability.

The leaders who focus on reducing workflow friction, clarifying roles, and protecting clinical focus will be better positioned, regardless of what the labor market does next.