NFP Jobs in US Continue Show Resilience in Economic Downturn
8 September 2011 at 10:30 am
America’s Not for Profit organisations continue to display striking resilience in the face of the current economic downturn according to a new analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies.
The study shows that jobs in the US Not for Profit sector continued to grow in 2010, rising nearly 1 percent over their 2009 level.
However,the report says the rate of Not for Profit job growth has faltered recently, trending downward from 2.6 percent in 2008 to 1.2 percent in 2009 and to 0.8 percent in 2010.
The report says the NFP jobs picture contrasts sharply with the for-profit one where overall job losses have been registered for each of the past three years.
Dr. Lester Salamon, the senior author on the new Hopkins report says this is especially significant because organisations now employ nearly 10 percent of all private workers in the United States, making the NFP workforce the third largest in the U.S., behind only manufacturing and retail trade, but far ahead of construction, transportation, and finance.
Dr Salmon says people tend to overlook the Not for Profit sector when thinking about job creation, but it is 'the little engine that could,' producing a substantial share of the job growth seen in the U.S. economy.
The study shows half of all NFP jobs (50 percent) are in the health field, but education (13 percent) and social services (11 percent) also account for significant shares.
An overview of the report’s principal findings, which include Not for Profit vs. for-profit comparisons, state job growth patterns, and variations by field of nonprofit activity, is available at:
http://www.ccss.jhu.edu/pdfs/NED_Bulletins/National/2011_Nonprofit_Jobs_overview.pdf
The full report from which these data are drawn, Nonprofits Continue to Add Jobs in the Current Downturn, but the Rate of Job Growth Falters, will be available later this month.
