Posted on Monday, October 28, 2019 11:45 AM
Home health aides, personal care aides, and nursing assistants are various types of home care workers who work with disabled people and the elderly in their homes. According to the latest figures from PHI and the U.S. Census, the direct care workforce is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse in the nation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that if you include workers in nursing homes and other settings, 51 percent of the direct care workforce is home care workers, which amounts to about 4.5 million workers. Nearly two-thirds of all home care jobs are funded by government payments through Medicaid and Medicare.
Women dominate the home health workforce as they make-up 87% with a median age of 46. Racially the workforce is 38% white, 28% are African American, 23% are Hispanic and 8% are Asian. Seventeen percent of the workforce is made up of immigrants, but 31% come from countries outside the U.S. Almost 70 percent of home care workers are citizens born in the United States, another 16 percent are naturalized citizens, and 14 percent are not citizens of the U.S. Of the home care workers born outside the U.S., 37 percent speak English poorly or not at all.
The home care workforce has more than doubled in the last decade, growing from nearly 900,000 in 2008 to almost 2.3 million in 2018. Personal care aides accounted for over 80 percent of this growth, part of the swelling need for non-medical support in the home among our increasingly aged population.
Source: NAHC Report
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