The United States saw the loss of 159,000 jobs during September, while the country’s unemployment rate remained at 6.1 percent. While employment in many major industries, including construction, manufacturing and retail trade continued to lose jobs, the healthcare industry added jobs.

During September, the healthcare industry increased by 17,000 jobs, according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past year, the healthcare industry has average about 30,000 new jobs per month.

Overall, the education and health services industry employed 19,019,000 people during September, up from 18,994,000 during August. The industry saw an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent during September, down from 4.3 percent in August.

There were 673,000 job openings and 510,000 hires during July. In September, the average healthcare worker earned $18.89 per hour and worked 32.5 hours per week.

The healthcare industry was the largest in 2006, providing 14 million jobs, including 13.6 million jobs for wage and salary and 438,000 self-employed jobs. Of the 20 fastest-growing occupations, seven are healthcare related.

The healthcare industry is expected to create 3 million new jobs through 2016, which is more than any other industry. Another advantage of the industry is that most workers have jobs requiring less than four years of college education.

The healthcare industry itself is made up of about 580,000 establishments, and 77 percent are offices of physicians, dentists or other health practitioners. While hospitals make up only 1 percent of all healthcare establishments, they employ 35 percent of all workers.

The segments that make up the healthcare industry include: hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities, offices of physicians, offices of dentists, home healthcare services, offices of other health practitioners, outpatient care centers, other ambulatory healthcare services and medical and diagnostic laboratories.