The health services industry: a decade of expansion.

Along with a rise in the demand for medical services, and a steady increase in the costs of those services, the number of workers employed in the health services industry has grown at a very rapid pace . As the decade opened, about 4.3 million persons were working in hospitals, convalescent institutions, physicians' and dentists' offices, or other health care facilities .' By 1979, their number had grown to more than 6.7 million, an increase of 55 percent . During the same period, the total work force grew by 23 percent . Median earnings of wage-and-salary workers in health services, however, were below the all-industry average throughout the decade. For full-time hospital employees, median usual weekly earnings were 86 percent of the national average in 1978, up from 82 percent in 1970 . In other segments of the health services industry, average wage-and-salary earnings remained at about three-quarters of the all-industry average. However, workweeks tended to be slightly shorter in the health services industry than for all industries, both for parttime and full-time workers. This article covers health service employees, such as physicians, nurses, and laboratory technicians, plus