Healthcare systems, hospitals and clinics across the country have long struggled to fill critical roles as an aging population drives the need for care, while the demanding nature of the field has deterred many from pursuing careers in it. But now, a shift may be underway. iCIMS, a leading provider of talent acquisition technology, today released the iCIMS Insights February 2025 Workforce Report, exploring the latest activity in job openings, applications and hires. The report includes a special focus on healthcare hiring, revealing potential signs of relief for the industry.
“While we’re seeing movement in hiring activity, uncertainty still lingers across the labor market,” said Laura Coccaro, chief people officer, iCIMS. “Employers are opening more jobs, and candidates are showing renewed interest, but the question remains —will this momentum continue, or will hesitation return? HR leaders will need to remain agile and prepare for potential shifting hiring trends in the months ahead.”
Key hiring trends drawn from iCIMS’ proprietary platform of thousands of customers worldwide:
- The labor market waiting game continues. Activity for overall job openings and applications surged in January, up 35% and 32% respectively, month over month. Yet, hiring is down 5% from this time last year.
- Healthcare jobs are in demand at the start of 2025. Application volume for healthcare roles increased 24% month over month in January and is 9% higher than in January 2024. After pulling back on opening roles at the end of last year, healthcare job openings rose 25% from last month and inched up 5% higher than January 2024, largely driven by an uptick in applications and openings for clinical roles specifically (i.e., doctors, physician assistants, nurses, etc.). Healthcare hires are down just 2% from January 2024.
- Older workers are leading the healthcare charge. Just over half (52%) of applicants in healthcare were under 35 in January compared to 64% in the overall labor market. As older workers (55+) are beginning to retire from the health field, they may in turn be causing a shortage in some roles as well as well as creating additional need for healthcare services.
- Applicants are showing interest in low-paying healthcare jobs. Applicants per opening (APO) for healthcare jobs with salaries under $50K rose slightly year over year, up from 28 to 31 APO. This is on par with APO for similar paying jobs across all other sectors, up from 30 to 35 APO in the same time series. On the other hand, APO for six-figure healthcare jobs (21) was much lower than in the overall market (45) last month.
- Healthcare jobs are getting filled faster. 2024 saw the lowest average time to fill in at least five years. On average, healthcare jobs took 37 days to fill last year, just a little over five weeks. This is a drop from two years ago, where the average was a solid 6 weeks (43 days).
Mercy, the sixth largest Catholic health system in the U.S. with over 40,000 workers, had a difficult and time-consuming application experience and recruiters dealt with clunky, manual processes. With thousands of open requisitions and over 1 million visits to their career sites, Mercy turned to iCIMS to make their recruiting efforts more efficient and sustainable, while enhancing the experience, to fill critical open roles. With iCIMS, Mercy receives applications from 25,000 candidates per month with a 27% applicant conversation rate and fills open roles in 11 days, down from 13 days just two years earlier.
Download the iCIMS Insights February 2025 Workforce Report for a deeper dive into the latest workforce trends.
