This chart collection takes a deep dive into employment data  to analyze how jobs and wages in the health sector shrank and recovered during the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike past recessions, the health sector saw a big drop in employment in early 2020 but began to recover by May 2020. As of December 2022, the number of people employed in the health sector was 1.2% higher than in February 2020 (the previous peak).

The data show that the number of workers employed in nursing care and elder care continues to remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels even after other health settings recovered all or most of their lost jobs.

The chart collection is available  on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, an online information hub dedicated to monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system