(NEW YORK) — The labor market slowed sharply this summer, leaving job applicants with fewer places to turn for a new position.

Employers added an average of about 35,000 jobs over three months ending in July, which marks a major slowdown from roughly 128,000 jobs added monthly over the prior three months, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said earlier this month.

The hiring cooldown has hit nearly every industry, including manufacturing, leisure and hospitality and the federal government.

But two industries have bucked the trend: Health care and social assistance, the latter of which comprises services like child care and counseling, economists told ABC News. If not for job growth in those two sectors, the labor market would have suffered net job losses over the past three months.

“This is a job market where growth is very thin,” Daniel Zhao, chief economist at job-posting site Glassdoor, told ABC News. “Unfortunately, there aren’t many industries growing consistently and robustly.”

“The job market is being propped up by health care and social assistance,” Zhao added.

Health care

The health care sector added 55,000 jobs in July, which amounted to three of every four jobs added across the U.S. economy last month, BLS data showed. The performance in July extended robust growth that stretches back several years, economists said.

“There’s clearly an industry that stands out right now and that would be health care,” Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, told ABC News.

The gangbusters hiring in the health care sector owes to two overlapping trends, economists said: persistent demand for health care from an aging population and ongoing recovery from job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike discretionary costs like luxury goods or restaurant dining, health care services are a necessity taken up by consumers regardless of financial conditions, economists said.

“Health care is a non-optional industry,” Stahle said. “If you need health care, you need health care.”

As the baby-boomer generation has aged, a growing share of people have experienced such healthcare needs. Between 2012 and 2050, the population of older people – aged 65 and above – is expected to nearly double from about 43 million to 83 million, the U.S. Census Bureau found in 2014.

Robust consumer demand has coincided with a shortage of workers in the aftermath of widespread job losses as health care professionals suffered burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While overall employment in the sector has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, the new workers have been unevenly distributed, leaving shortages at workplaces such as skilled nursing facilities and intensive behavioral health centers, researchers at the University of Michigan found in June.

“We do expect job growth in health care to continue as the U.S. population ages and demand for health services continues to rise,” Zhao said.

Social assistance

Social assistance, the provision of support and emergency relief services, makes up the other bright spot in the job market.

The sector added 18,000 jobs in July, accounting for nearly one of every four jobs added last month, BLS data showed.

A subset of the sector, referred to by the descriptor “individual and family services,” accounted for all of the jobs added in July. Such work is made up of counseling, welfare and referral services.

Employers have continued to hire for therapist roles, despite a slowdown in the wider job market, Stahle said, citing job postings on Indeed.

If the economy tips into a recession, the industry will likely continue to grow, since a larger share of the population would need assistance in the event of financial hardship, Zhao said.

“This is a sector that grows even during bad times, because there is a demand for more social assistance when the economy is poor and people do need those services,” Zhao added.

Positions in the sector are not typically well compensated, however. Average hourly earnings in social assistance clocked in at $23.60 in June, the most recent month for which such data is available. That pay level came in well below an average of $36.32 per hour across the private sector, BLS data showed.

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