Women-owned businesses are creating Connecticut healthcare jobs. They are also responsible for creating jobs in many other states.

The number of U.S. businesses increased by 34 percent from 1997 to 2011, when women-owned firms grew by 50 percent – a rate 1½ times the national average. It’s clear that health care and social service fields have the highest concentration of women-owned firms, with 52 percent owned by women, according to the American Express OPEN State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, a Summary of Important Trends, 1997–2011.

An example of such a business is the Home Instead Senior Care network.

More than half of Home Instead Senior Care® franchises are owned all, or in part, by women, including the top five U.S. franchises.

Tim Connelly, director of Franchise Development for Home Instead, Inc., said he believes that women bring many valuable skills to home care franchising, including caring, compassion, organization and the ability to get people to work together. “What’s more, women are often viewed as the family caregivers, so they understand the needs and challenges of caring for others.”

Caregiverlist, a company that provides caregivers for seniors, announced this week it is recruiting for healthcare jobs in Chicago.

The company is looking for caregivers specifically to attend to seniors’ needs.

While Chicago nursing jobs are more difficult to find, nurses’ aids and caregivers are in high demand.

Chicago seniors are most likely to stay in the Chicago area, studies show, providing ongoing employment opportunities for senior caregivers. Caregiverlist’s Career Center provides interactive tools for professional Chicago caregivers to find caregiver training programs, nursing aide schools, caregiver job descriptions and an application to apply for local senior care jobs.

In the Chicago area, more than 100 senior home care agencies have opened their doors in the last five years and turned to Caregiverlist to hire prequalified senior caregiver job applicants. The number of retirees in the Chicago area will grow to 1.5 million by the year 2020.

A study by the Metro Chicago Information Center and the Institute for Metropolitan Affairs found that seniors will likely move from the homes where they raised their families but still prefer to stay in the Chicago area in smaller homes or condos.
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Takeda has announced that they will be eliminating many pharmaceutical jobs in Chicago.

The drug maker said they will cut as many as 500 jobs as part of a restructuring plan that will eliminate 1600 employees nationwide.

The Japan-based company said the cuts are being made at its Deerfield-based Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America headquarters and will reduce head count there by 28 percent, including 300 workers locally.

Cuts also will be made at Takeda Global Research and Development Center in Lake Forest, which employs 840 people. Twenty percent of the workforce there will be cut.

According to the SunTimes.com, the cuts are being made “to reduce costs and better align the organizations with the company’s current product portfolio, which is challenged by development delays and patent expirations of some of our core products,” spokeswoman Kara Hoger said in a statement.

Even though healthcare has long been considered a recession-proof industry, those looking for Chicago nurse jobs are finding that might not necessarily be the case.

It seems that many recent graduates are having trouble finding nursing jobs at any of the medical centers in the Chicago area.

“We are definitely seeing a decrease in openings for new grads,” Vicki Keough, acting dean of Loyola University Chicago’s Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

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If you’re looking for a healthcare job in Illinois, you should know that being a doctor or nurse aren’t your only options. If you’re interested in something different, you might want to see what kind of positions in a CNA job Chicago has to offer.

Certified nursing assistants are responsible for giving personal care to patients in hospitals and nursing homes, according to an article by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

They work under the direction of nursing and medical staff. CNA duties often include giving baths and back rubs; making hospital beds; carrying meal trays; helping patients in and out of bed; taking temperature, pulse, respiration, weight and blood pressure readings; answering calls; writing notes on patients’ charts and taking appropriate action during emergencies.

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