In Iowa, job prospects in the field of healthcare administration are so promising that the state’s Department of Workforce Development ranked the profession as number 10 on its list of Iowa’s “Hot 50 jobs.” The jobs that made the list were those that experience high demand and that offer high salaries.
Salary data from the Iowa Department of Workforce Development indicated that healthcare administrators with experience earned 81.8% more than their colleagues who had just entered the workforce. As of 2014, experienced healthcare administrators in Iowa earned an average salary of $91,725, while their entry-level colleagues earned an average of $50,452. The median salary among healthcare administrators in Iowa was $72,618 that year.
Employment Levels and Job Growth for Iowa’s Healthcare Administrators
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked Iowa as having the third highest concentration of healthcare administrators in the country as of 2014.
In particular, healthcare administration jobs were concentrated in Iowa City, which had the 2nd highest concentration of healthcare administrators of any metropolitan area in the country that year. Ames was 10th on this list. Jobs are also plentiful in the nonmetropolitan area of Southwest Iowa, which had the highest number of healthcare administrators of any rural area in the country as of 2014.
The number of healthcare administrators is rapidly growing in Iowa, too. The Iowa Department of Workforce Development projects an increase of 20% in the number of jobs for healthcare administrators between 2012 and 2022. This level of growth should generate an average of 210 new jobs each year during this ten-year period.
Job opportunities for healthcare administrators tend to align almost exactly with overall job growth in the healthcare sector. A number of specific areas of healthcare in Iowa are expected to see strong job growth during the ten-year period between 2012 and 2022:
- Ambulatory health care services – 15,865 new jobs; 30.2% growth
- Nursing and residential care facilities – 10,590 new jobs; 19.1% growth
- Hospitals – 6,885 new jobs; 10.7% growth
The Salaries of Healthcare Administrators Throughout Iowa
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a detailed analysis of the salaries for healthcare administrators in Iowa’s major cities and rural areas as of 2014:
