Alexandria, VA March 2, 2004 The physician assistant (PA) profession is projected to become the third fastest-growing occupation in the U.S. between 2002 and 2012, according to employment projections released in February 2004 by the U.S. Government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS predicts that the number of physician assistant jobs in the U.S. will grow by 49 percent from 2002-2012, while total U.S. employment is projected to increase by only 15 percent during this period.

The PA profession has consistently been named as one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country by the BLS. It has steadily moved up the list of top U.S. professions: PAs were the 20th fastest-growing occupation in the 1997 BLS report, 10th fastest in the 1999 report, and 12th fastest in the 2001 report. The BLS estimates that there were 63,000 PA jobs in 2002, and predicts that number will increase to 94,000 in 2012.

"This new data released by the U.S. government confirms what we're hearing all the time from the medical community that as the practice of medicine rapidly changes in the U.S. more employers are hiring PAs," said Stephen Crane, executive vice president and CEO of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA). "The U.S. government is predicting what we're already seeing an increasing number of PAs in the U.S. labor force, who work directly with an increasing number of patients."

The ten-year projections by the BLS of economic growth, employment by industry and occupation, and labor force are widely used in career guidance, in planning education and training programs, and in studying long-range employment and economic trends.

While the BLS reports on the number of U.S. jobs, data collected by AAPA focuses on the number of people clinically practicing as PAs. AAPA estimates that there are curren
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2-Mar-2004