Spokane County health care industry employment trend

As you know, Spokane’s main growth industry is health care and our region’s future is now tied to a regional health care economy and a new academic health science center that will generate thousands of jobs and create billions of dollars in economic activity.

Here is a chart of the combined health care + non-government education sector employment in Spokane County, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, they combine the health care and education industries together, although private education makes hardly a blip in the total. Data is through March of 2012.

This category stopped growing in early 2009 and has been falling steadily ever since. 

Related, in Davenport, Lincoln Hospital nursing home and the Vista Manor Assisted Living Center in Wilbur are both being shut down and the workers laid off.