Insights / States and national healthcare benchmarks
15 states with the most healthcare workers per 1,000 jobs
New York leads this list on support jobs. West Virginia is the denser state for practitioners.
A national staffing plan treated the top of this list as one kind of healthcare market.
New York's combined figure is 153.026 healthcare jobs for every 1,000 jobs in the state. Support occupations are 89.277 of that. Practitioners are 63.749. The lead is aides, assistants, and the rest of the support group, not a surplus of nurses and therapists.
West Virginia is second on the combined list, at 148.978, and first where it matters for licensed clinical hiring. Practitioner jobs there are 91.857 per 1,000 jobs, far above New York. If the reqs on your sheet are practitioners, copying New York's rank into the plan points you at the wrong density.
Ranked table
| Rank | State | Practitioner jobs per 1,000 | Support jobs per 1,000 | Combined jobs per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | 63.749 | 89.277 | 153.026 |
| 2 | West Virginia | 91.857 | 57.121 | 148.978 |
| 3 | Pennsylvania | 72.179 | 65.292 | 137.471 |
| 4 | Minnesota | 66.609 | 63.635 | 130.244 |
| 5 | California | 54.385 | 75.428 | 129.813 |
| 6 | Maine | 70.395 | 57.654 | 128.049 |
| 7 | Missouri | 70.892 | 56.959 | 127.851 |
| 8 | Louisiana | 76.336 | 51.039 | 127.375 |
| 9 | Connecticut | 69.995 | 56.671 | 126.666 |
| 10 | Delaware | 74.678 | 49.558 | 124.236 |
| 11 | Massachusetts | 68.930 | 55.098 | 124.028 |
| 12 | New Mexico | 59.774 | 63.622 | 123.396 |
| 13 | Vermont | 71.499 | 47.198 | 118.697 |
| 14 | Rhode Island | 67.184 | 51.008 | 118.192 |
| 15 | Mississippi | 74.026 | 43.892 | 117.918 |
Takeaways
- Pennsylvania is third at 137.471 combined, with 72.179 practitioner jobs and 65.292 support jobs per 1,000.
- California's combined figure is 129.813, and its support side, 75.428, outweighs its practitioner side of 54.385.
- Mississippi is 15th and still high, at 117.918 combined. The bottom of a top-15 list is not a thin state.
- Nationwide those two groups employ 9,823,860 practitioners and 7,901,670 support workers. This page does not quote a national per-1,000 rate, because that cell is unpublished in the extract.
For recruiters
- Ask whether the req is a practitioner job or a support job before you cite the combined rank.
- For licensed clinical hiring, read the West Virginia practitioner figure before you brief New York as the deepest bench.
FAQ
- Are these posted wages or open jobs?
- No. The table is a government survey or a designation file.
- What should a recruiter do first?
- Follow the recruiter note on this page.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
Related hiring pages
Methodology
Each state figure adds the OEWS May 2025 jobs-per-1,000 cell for SOC 29-0000, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, to the cell for SOC 31-0000, Healthcare Support Occupations. The two major groups do not overlap. Nationwide employment in those group rows is 9,823,860 and 7,901,670. The national jobs-per-1,000 cells for the group rows are unpublished in this extract, so this article does not quote a U.S. rate. The table shows the 15 highest combined rates. The lowest combined rate is 72.277 in District of Columbia. This is not a count of job listings. The table ranks published cells. It is not a forecast of hiring difficulty and it is not a tally of openings posted by employers. Where a state has hiring pages, the state name links to those pages. A state with no metro on the hiring grid still appears when the source file publishes the figure, and that row has no hiring link.
Sources
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