Last week’s jobs numbers overall were on the “meh” side, but if there was a bright spot, it was health care. Half of all new employment in July was in the health care sector, with some 55,000 new jobs, mostly in home health care, hospitals and residential care facilities.

But competition for workers in the medical field is already pretty fierce and has led to some pretty interesting recruitment tactics. Case in point: the state of New Mexico is running an ad campaign in Texas trying to lure health workers who may want to leave because of the state’s abortion restrictions.

Can we really expect droves of frustrated Texas health care workers to relocate to New Mexico?  Probably not, according to Iman Abuzeid, who runs Incredible Health, a health care career marketplace.

“When we just look at the top 10 cities that nurses want to move to, it correlates very closely with where Americans are moving to in general,” she said.

In fact, Texas is still a big draw for nurses, along with Florida and Georgia. Their motivations for moving? Family reasons, cost of living and “No. 1 is their specific career advancement opportunities that they want to pursue,” Abuzeid said. “For example, advancing their specialty or advancing their skill.”

While New Mexico’s ad campaign might not boost health care hiring, its investments in student loan repayment programs may help, according to Mike Shimmens, who runs the National Rural Recruitment and Retention Network.

“That’s a workforce solution that’s tried and true,” Shimmens said.

Another tactic Shimmens has started to see in rural areas, where finding housing can be a challenge: “There are organizations out there that are starting to offer solutions for that, i.e., either buying or even possibly building their own housing,” he said.

Education can be another tool to retain or attract workers, said Christin Stanford with recruitment firm AMN Healthcare.

“What we’ve seen is some wise health care systems really investing in the opportunity for a health care professional to be paid for continuing education,” Stanford said. 

And, of course, pay is another biggie. But for lower-wage health care jobs, employers aren’t just competing with other providers, said economist Vivian Ho with Rice University.

“Increases in minimum wages you see for Walmart, Target, all of these large employers have to be affecting the ability of health care employers to get home health care workers,” Ho said.

As wages creep up in other industries, health care has to compete. 

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