“February's accelerated job growth was widespread across a range of industries, including 82,000 new jobs in professional and business services, 61,000 in health care and social assistance…” - Statement by Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis on February employment numbers.

This statement reinforces the activity I’ve been seeing on HIMSS JobMine and what I witnessed at HIMSS12. Healthcare organizations are hiring. Hospitals, vendors, consulting firms and even academia are busy recruiting healthcare IT professionals. I’ve seen a number of newly created positions too.

According to a recent article Healthcare IT News published, regarding the 2012 HIMSS Leadership survey, “nearly two-thirds of the 302 IT executive level respondents expect to add staff in the next year to successfully implement their IT initiatives.”

With all of these positive indicators, why am I still hearing from frustrated job seekers who remain unemployed and from employers who can’t fill positions? All I can hypothesize is that while all the elements are there, they’re circling each other like shy students at a middle school dance. Once they fall into step and establish a rhythm, the pace of this already positive employment trend will increase.

Employers will have to adapt and look at ways to employ new graduates or certificate holders without the minimum 1-3 years healthcare IT experience they’re currently requiring. Job seekers will have to manage their expectations as well.  While jobs are being added, they’re not being added all at once. Some positions are remaining unfilled after a year because they are located in smaller, rural community hospitals.

The Department of Labor’s statement is an uplifting one and reveals a turn for the country’s economy, stating that the “last six months has been the strongest since before the recession began in 2006.” It’s far from perfect, but moving in the right direction. Hopefully, six months from now, the circling will have stopped and the dance will have begun.

E.J. Fechenda is the Audience Data Manager for MedTech Media. Since 2008 she has helped manage Healthcare Finance JobSpot and Healthcare IT JobSpot - now merged with HIMSS JobMine. She is not a Human Resources professional, nor a healthcare expert, but over the years she's accumulated a lot of feedback and insight from both job seekers and employers alike. Each week E.J. will deliver a blog based on this information. One week will be employer focused and the next week, job seeker focused.