Healthcare Hiring Surges Despite Talent Crunch

The healthcare sector is hiring at full throttle in 2025, but there's a catch: finding qualified people has never been harder.

Close to 150,000 new healthcare job openings were added in the first half of 2025 among the professional roles Robert Half places, according to Robert Half's 2025 workforce analysis. The pace has kept up: Robert Half counted more than 161,900 new healthcare job openings in the first half of 2026.

The numbers paint a picture of an industry trying to scale up. But this isn't your typical hiring boom. In 2026, 60% of non-clinical healthcare leaders said finding skilled professionals is more challenging than a year ago.

Translation? Healthcare is growing fast, but the talent pool isn't keeping pace.

The Talent Drought Gets Worse

Here's where things get interesting. Unemployment for many nonclinical healthcare jobs is far below the national rate. Citing BLS data, Robert Half put first-quarter 2026 unemployment at 1.0% for medical records specialists, 2.4% for claims adjusters and examiners, and 2.7% for medical and health services managers, compared with a national rate of 4.3% in May 2026.

What's driving this crunch? Expanding healthcare services, particularly the rapid increase in telehealth and digital health platforms, are creating demand for professionals who combine healthcare support knowledge with technical expertise. Organizations need people who understand both patient care workflows and complex software systems—a combination that's rare and getting rarer.

The Contract Talent Solution

Faced with hard-to-fill permanent positions, healthcare organizations are adapting. In Robert Half's latest survey, 69% of non-clinical healthcare leaders said they plan to increase contract hiring in the second half of 2026, while 75% plan to grow full-time headcount.

This isn't just a stopgap measure. Contract professionals offer healthcare organizations flexibility to tackle specific projects, manage seasonal workload spikes, and essentially "test drive" talent before committing to permanent hires.

The nonclinical roles in demand span the full healthcare operation. Robert Half has named medical billers, medical coders, medical receptionists, EHR administrators, revenue cycle specialists, and compliance officers among them.

But there's a compensation problem brewing. While these roles require increasingly complex abilities, particularly in healthcare software systems and AI tools, compensation packages haven't kept pace with market demand. In a 2025 Robert Half survey, 34% of nonclinical healthcare employees said they feel underpaid.

Healthcare organizations are caught between tight reimbursement budgets, including Medicare payments, and a talent market demanding higher pay. Something has to give.

Skills That Command Premium Pay

The most valued skills in healthcare hiring include data analytics, patient engagement strategies, digital business strategy, and change management capabilities. Organizations are specifically hunting for professionals who can navigate the intersection of healthcare and technology.

New hybrid roles are emerging too, combining healthcare data, billing knowledge, and AI tools. Many of these jobs did not exist a few years ago.

Certifications like the Certified Healthcare Financial Professional (CHFP) can help candidates stand out, particularly as healthcare organizations wrestle with increasingly complex revenue cycles and specialized talent shortages.

The reality is that healthcare is transforming faster than its workforce can adapt. Telehealth grew during the pandemic and is now a regular part of care. Digital health platforms are multiplying. AI is creeping into everything from patient scheduling to claims processing.

Each innovation requires people who bridge the gap between clinical care and digital systems. And right now, there simply aren't enough of them.

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