Economic Sectors - Education And Health Services

The education and health services supersector includes all instructional and training facilities, including private schools and universities, that are not funded by the government. Nongovernmental organizations that provide child day care, medical care, and social assistance are also included. Businesses of this type that are government owned (public schools and hospitals, for example) are considered part of the government sector (see below).

The BLS in Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages estimated that in 2003 there were 13,721,850 workers employed in private health care and social assistance and 2,016,163 workers in private education. Non-supervisory workers in this sector averaged 32.3 hours on the job in 2003, compared to the national average of 33.7 hours for production and nonsupervisory personnel according to Industry at a Glance. At 3.6%, the unemployment rate for workers in this sector was lower than the national average of 6% in 2003.

Education, NAICS 61

According to the Council for American Private Education (CAPE), there were approximately 29,000 private schools in the United States in 2005, with more than six million students. In Private Schools: A Brief Portrait, Findings from the Condition of Education 2002, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimated that private schools constituted about 24% of all schools and maintained approximately 10% of national school enrollment. The NCES reported that 79% of private schools had a religious affiliation, with 30% Roman Catholic, 49% other, and the remainder nonsectarian. Private Schools found that on average, private schools had smaller class sizes and lower student/teacher ratios than public schools.

Health Care and Social Assistance, NAICS 62

According to the American Hospital Association in "Fast Facts on U.S. Hospitals from AHA Hospital Statistics" (http://www.aha.org/aha/resource_center/fastfacts/fast_facts_US_hospitals.html), of the 5,764 U.S. hospitals counted in the survey, 4,895 were community hospitals, that is, hospitals accessible to the general public and intended for short-term care. Academic teaching hospitals are included in this number if they are nonfederal, short-term facilities, but psychiatric hospitals, long-term care facilities, and prison hospitals, for example, are not. In 2003 there were 2,984 nongovernment, nonprofit community hospitals and 790 investor-owned, for-profit community hospitals in the United States.

In 2003 Service Annual Survey (2004), the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that revenue for employer firms in the health care and social assistance sector reached $1.3 trillion in 2003. Of this number, physicians' offices brought in $256.4 billion, nursing and residential care facilities earned $126.8 billion, dentists reached $70.8 billion, medical and diagnostic laboratories totaled $29.1 billion, and child day care services earned $23 billion in 2003.