Non Profit Jobs Continuing to Flourish

Many organizations are continuing to add non profit jobs (http://jobs.heart.org) as the rest of the nation strives to recover from the recession.

The most recent report from the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Economic Data Project found that nonprofit organizations were able to hold their own throughout the economic recession and are continuing to flourish during the recovery.

Nonprofits saw employment growth of 1 percent between 2009 and 2010, pushing the sector's labor force up by 5 percent between 2007 and 2010, the years during which the recession was in full swing.

At the same time, for-profit employment dropped by 1.1 percent in 2008, by 6.2 percent in 2009 and by .9 percent in 2010 - resulting in a total decline of more than 8 percent between 2007 and 2010.

On the downside, the rate of nonprofit job growth has slowed in recent years, dropping from 2.6 percent in 2008 to 1.2 percent in 2009, and then to .8 percent in 2010.

The nonprofit employment growth and for-profit employment decline was consistent in almost all of the 45 states included in the report. Employment increased in five of the six nonprofit sectors, with ciic organizations seeing the only decline.

Some other key findings of the report include:

• Nonprofit organizations employ 10.5 million workers, which accounts for close to 10 percent of the nation's workforce.
• The nonprofit workforce is the third-largest in the nation, behind only manufacturing and retail trade.
• Nonprofit employment varies from state to state, ranging from 2.6 percent in Nevada to more than 18 percent in New York and Rhode Island.
• About 50 percent of nonprofit jobs are in healthcare, while 13 percent are in education, and 11 percent are in social services.