Start with these two facts. First, as a former business school prof, I pay attention to hiring patterns. Second, one of the less attractive aspects of getting older is one spends more time in medical and dental offices.
As a result, I’ve been struck by the truly enormous number of young women such offices employ. Because the DrsC live in two places during the year, I see close to twice as many medical offices as would otherwise be the case. Some examples will illustrate what I’ve noted.
My winter dermatologist’s office contains three care deliverers, one doctor and two nurse practitioners. In addition to which there are at least three young women working phone/computer stations and perhaps as many as six I’d call “medical assistants.” My summer dermatologist has roughly the same staff.
The eye care office we patronized in CA had 3-4 office staff and something like 6-8 women doing eye tests and dilations in support of a couple of optometrists and one ophthalmologist.
Other specialists we’ve seen have a covey of young and not-so-young women backing up the professional whose name is on the door. I calculate there are hundreds of thousands of such jobs nationwide. There are a few fellows doing this semi-skilled work, but mostly it is young women.
As most of this workforce is young, I conclude it is not viewed as career employment that someone would do for 30-40 years. I suppose it is a pink collar ghetto of sorts, although those so employed seem in reasonable spirits and content with their lot.
