The healthcare sector attracts fewer fresh graduates | internal

“The fact that it is seniors who are starting a new healthcare business indicates lateral entry success,” reports human resource services group Acerta. “More and more people are moving into healthcare from another sector.”

The analysis relied on numbers from 800 healthcare companies. The average age of new healthcare workers has increased in five years, from 37 to 39.5, in part because of the side entrants. The number of men finding their way to a new job in healthcare is at its highest level in the past five years. However, the sector remains eminently “female”.

“There is a decrease in both people under 25 (-16.9 percent) and 26 to 35 (-5.9 percent),” according to the analysis. “But efforts by the healthcare industry and government to attract more diverse groups of employees through horizontal entry are paying off.”

In the 36-45 and 46-55 age groups, the number of arrivals rose just over 8 percent last year. For people ages 56 to 65, that percentage was 55.8 percent, although it’s very low absolute numbers.

At 33 per cent of all arrivals, people aged 26-35 still make up the largest group, followed by those aged 36-45 (23.3%) and those under 25 (19.4%).

Acerta expects more recent graduates to re-enter the company in the coming years. After all, the numbers show that enrollment in care courses is increasing. Meanwhile, thousands of job vacancies in the sector remain unfilled. The analysis concludes that “nursing remains the number one profession in Flanders with a bottleneck, despite various efforts”.