Employment Spillover Effects of Rural Inpatient Healthcare Facilities

Abstract

This report estimates the share of wage/salary employment in inpatient healthcare facilities—hospitals, nursing homes, and other residential care facilities—versus other industries in rural counties during 2001-15, and the spillover effects of additional inpatient facility employment, in rural counties. On average, we find no clear spillover effect of inpatient facility employment on employment in other sectors, i.e., the employment multiplier is approximately 1. The multiplier is larger in rural micropolitan counties (1.24 total jobs) than in the most rural (noncore) counties (0.89 total jobs), but neither of these estimates is significantly different from 1, implying the absence of spillovers.