If you’re hiring or advising talent, the headline takeaway is brutally practical: healthcare has been adding jobs, while some tech and service-sector hiring is getting more cautious. Business Insider frames it as a stability divide between sectors, driven by how economies change demand. When businesses get nervous, they often pause or slow “nice to have” roles. Meanwhile, people still need care, treatment, and basic services no matter what the business cycle is doing.

The “always need doctors, always need nurses” argument is not just motivational. Loujaina Abdelwahed, head of economic research at Revelio Labs, says it plainly: “It doesn't matter how the economy is doing. We will always need doctors. We always need nurses.” That belief lines up with the employment picture Business Insider cites: the healthcare sector has typically been adding jobs each month, making up about 20% of overall net job growth in May. So if you’re trying to forecast which workforce investments hold up when uncertainty rises, healthcare is the sector that stays anchored.

Zoom in further and the stability pattern gets even more granular. Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, notes that turnover can be high in healthcare, but worker demand is also high. That combination matters because it makes job switching easier relative to many other sectors. For new grads, the structure of healthcare pathways also reduces uncertainty: Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, points to the “licenses or pathways into a job” dynamic. In education and healthcare, there are more rigid requirements and schooling, which can translate into a clearer route from graduation to employment.

But not all healthcare jobs are equally insulated. Zhao highlights a split inside the same umbrella: nursing assistants versus anesthesiologists. Anesthesiologists require specific expertise, medical school, and completion of an internship and medical residency, while nursing assistants are a much larger workforce category. Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in the report shows there were over a million nursing assistants as of May 2025, compared to about 39,000 anesthesiologists. The implication for leaders is simple: the more education, experience, and credentials define rarer, harder-to-replace skill sets, the more job security those skills tend to command. Zhao sums up the logic: more credentials help define a rarer set of skills, which can create more job security.

Outside healthcare, another resilient pocket is skilled trades. Zhao argues these jobs are less likely to be replaced by AI and are geographically spread out. His point is partly about concentration: some white-collar sectors like tech and finance cluster in big cities, while electricians, plumbers, and similar roles are distributed across communities. Employment projections Business Insider cites support the demand story. Electricians are projected to grow 9% from 2024 to 2034, while plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters are projected to grow 4%, just above the projected 3% for all occupations.

Trades also come with an overlooked second-order effect for boards and HR teams: they can create more internal pathways to entrepreneurship. Ed Brady, president and CEO at Home Builders Institute, argues that once someone masters a skill, they can hire others, build a business, and become an entrepreneur. That does not mean every organization will suddenly become a training engine, but it does mean trades can build durable career ladders that don’t rely on hiring cycles in the same way tech does. The report also flags an important caution. Becoming an electrician takes time, including trade school and thousands of hours of on-the-job training. Zhao warns that early years can feel insecure or unstable, and switching can be costly because the sunk time and effort is real.

Now for the riskier end of the spectrum. Business Insider calls out leisure and hospitality as less secure, historically, despite flashy headlines about white-collar layoffs. Zhao says instability hits blue-collar workers hardest and points to hospitality firms like restaurants and hotels as places with high uncertainty. The report connects that to high quit rates and specific sub-sector weakness: the arts, entertainment, and recreation subsector has a high rate of layoffs and discharges. For executives, this is a reminder that “consumer-facing” does not automatically mean “stable.” Demand shifts, staffing models break, and turnover patterns can amplify volatility.

Tech is the other major risk cluster. Abdelwahed characterizes data science and software engineering as “nice to have” jobs for many businesses, roles that may not be essential for adding new hires when economic uncertainty is rising. The labor data Business Insider cites echoes that chill: employment in the computer systems design and related services sector is down 1.5% from a year ago as of May, and employment in computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services is down 3%. Zhao adds that many computer science and computer engineering graduates are holding out for tech to recover, even though the degree should be valuable once the downturn ends.

Still, tech labor markets are not a single monolith. Zhao argues that workers in tech can branch out into more stable industries that need technical skills, but the report acknowledges a human preference problem: some job seekers want the upside, like joining a startup hoping for high compensation and “the next unicorn” outcome. For leaders deciding workforce strategy in mixed macro conditions, that’s the strategic stake. If you’re staffing for stability, you don’t want to over-index on roles that are easiest to pause. If you’re staffing for growth, you still need to understand which roles behave like demand shocks and which behave like structural needs. Healthcare and credentialed healthcare roles act more like the second. Many hospitality roles and parts of tech act more like the first.