Healthcare Staffing Report: May 7, 2015

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Occupational therapist jobs top ASA hard-to-fill list

Occupational therapist is the hardest occupation to fill in the US for the 12 months ended March 2015, according to The American Staffing Association’s skills gap index, a quarterly index that tracks hard-to-fill occupations in the US.

The list of top 10 hardest-to-fill occupations also changed during the past quarter. New on the top 10 are nurse practitioners, family and general practitioners, and physician assistants. They replaced psychiatrists, forest and conservation technicians, and general internists.

The index identified 181 occupations as hard to fill. The top 10 are:

  • Occupational therapists
  • Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers
  • Physical therapists
  • Photographic process workers and processing machine operators
  • Occupational therapy assistants
  • Speech-language pathologists
  • Family and general practitioners (physicians)
  • Merchandise displayers and window trimmers
  • Nurse practitioners
  • Physician assistants

“With more than 5 million job openings going unfilled, businesses are concerned that their growth will be impeded because they cannot fill their talent pipelines,” said ASA President and CEO Richard Wahlquist. “The ASA skills gap index assists businesses and their staffing firm partners in developing strategies to source qualified talent in occupations and in regions where demand significantly exceeds supply.”

ASA developed the index utilizing CareerBuilder’s hiring indicator, which measures the level of difficulty — on a scale of one to 100 — to recruit for a specific occupation based on demand, supply of active candidates and total population working in it. The ASA skills gap index concentrates on hiring indicator scores of 50 or less for hard-to-fill occupations, with a demand of 2,000 jobs or more.