PHOENIX – Mike Renaud says he would hire 20 physicians and 100 mental health therapists tomorrow if he could find qualified candidates.

Renaud, president and CEO of Valle del Sol that provides primary and behavioral health care in Arizona, said the organization has increased its staff by 15% over the past year but still needs more workers to meet demand.

“We would grow faster, but we don’t have enough of the clinical people here in Arizona to hire,” Renaud said.

His experience illustrates a challenge for Arizona’s economy. Health care is providing much of the state’s job growth, but employers need workers and money to keep expanding.

Arizona added 22,700 jobs outside agriculture between September 2025 and September 2026, including 12,500 in health care and social assistance, according to the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity.

That means the health care industry accounted for more than half of the state’s overall job gains.

The numbers reflect the rising demand for care in Arizona, but meeting that demand requires enough people willing and able to do the work. 

Doug Walls, OEO’s labor market information director, said Arizona’s growing and aging population is driving demand for health care, including more frequent and specialized services. 

At the same time, slower hiring in other industries has made health care a bigger part of the state’s job growth, he said.

“It’s a little bit of both,” Walls said.

Health care and social assistance employment grew 2.6% through September compared with the same time last year, matching the yearly pace OEO predicted. The long-term forecast, however, gives other industries a larger slice of the pie.

The agency expects health care and social assistance to add 113,466 jobs between 2024 and 2034, about a quarter of the state’s overall job growth.

The forecasts predict overall job growth after accounting for job losses. Employers must also replace workers who retire or leave, so they will need to hire more people than the growth figures alone suggest.

Walls said the forecast assumes the rate at which employees in the industry leave will stay about the same as demand grows. 

Still, difficulty finding new workers and employee burnout are long standing problems in the healthcare industry, he said.

At the Greater Phoenix Chamber’s Economic Outlook event Oct. 1, business and health care leaders discussed the industry’s growth and challenges going forward.

Mark Whalen, Banner Health’s chief enterprise growth officer, said the nonprofit is investing in clinics and technology intended to give medical staff more time for patients. Finding workers remains a challenge.

“One challenge is having the workforce to meet the growing demand,” Whalen said.

The Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation’s 2023 workforce report estimated that Arizona could face a shortage of 76,000 healthcare workers over the following decade.

Keeping future doctors from leaving Arizona is part of the shortfall, said Dr. Daniel Derksen, director of the Arizona Center for Rural Health at the University of Arizona.

After medical school, doctors continue their training in supervised positions called residencies. Arizona needs more of those positions, Derksen said, as many graduates who leave the state for training don’t come back. 

“We really haven’t kept up with the residency slots that we need for our population,” he said.

Derksen suggested encouraging more students from rural and tribal communities to pursue careers in healthcare through loan repayment programs. He said those efforts could help bring workers to the communities that lack them the most.

Some training programs are helping people find work. OEO’s 2025 review of ARIZONA@WORK adult training programs found health-related training had the strongest effect on employment after participants left the program.

After accounting for the differences in people’s backgrounds and local job markets, the agency estimated that completing health-related training was linked to about 14 more people working for every 100 participants, compared with those who did not start or complete training.

That suggests training programs can help, but whether it is enough to meet employers’ needs remains unclear.

Todd Sanders, the Greater Phoenix Chamber’s president and CEO, said its foundation works with high schools, community colleges and universities to prepare workers.

“There is a dire need for more talent, and we are squarely focused on that,” Sanders said.

Hiring also depends on whether hospitals and clinics can afford more workers, especially in rural communities.

If patients lose Medicaid, the government health insurance program for people with low incomes, hospitals and clinics may face bills that patients cannot pay.

“These safety net clinics and hospitals already run on very tight margins,” Derksen, the Arizona Center for Rural Health Director, said.

Under the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, some adults in Arizona’s Medicaid program will face work requirements and have to prove twice a year that they still qualify for coverage. Those changes begin in January 2027, according to Arizona’s Medicaid agency.

The need for more doctors and therapists shows the challenge behind Arizona’s job forecasts. Filling those jobs would also support the workers other industries rely on.

Dr. Michelle Gourdine, chief medical officer at CVS Caremark, said at the economic outlook event that access to care helps people stay healthy enough to work, providing an economic boost.

“Health and economics are deeply interconnected,” she said.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.