During the current economic downturn, health care has been among the few industries to maintain its overall levels of employment, even increasing employment in some places and fields. At the same time, health care reform has opened to question many future projections for the health care workforce.

In this piece, prepared for public workforce agencies in Connecticut, JFF health care experts examined how the state should go about monitoring, understanding, and responding to its growing and increasingly dynamic health care workforce demands. Challenges include:

• Pressures on demand and supply;
• Technology and business model innovations;
• Legislative and budget changes;
• Coordinating complex challenges and resources; and
• Facilitating and improving the consistency of market analyses.

Most of Connecticut’s in-demand health care jobs are equally in demand nationwide. Therefore, many of the challenges facing this state—and how JFF recommends addressing them—have broad implications for our nation as a whole.