A Booming Local Health-Care Industry Isn’t Always a Good Thing
A high concentration of these jobs can be a sign that there’s not enough else going on in your local economy.
There’s plenty of work being done at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Photographer: Ariana Lindquist/Bloomberg
In midsize (and sometimes larger) cities around the U.S., health care is often viewed with pride as a key local industry. Having good hospitals in the neighborhood is a plus, of course, and highly paid medical personnel are also nice for local economies to have around.
But very few of these hospitals and medical professionals are attracting patients from faraway cities. Instead, what has been happening is a regional centralization of health care, with rural areas and small towns losing out and health-care activity migrating to population centers. If health care is a really big part of your local economy, it’s often less something to brag about than a sign that there’s not enough else going on in your local economy.1