​​The first Friday of the month brought a fresh jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And this month, the numbers were worse than the industry experts were expecting.

The report showed a loss of 92,000 jobs. After months of easing, unemployment numbers crept up too, to 4.4%. The big shift was in health care jobs — usually one of the sectors that grows reliably. But in February, the country lost 28,000 health care jobs.

The biggest and most immediate factor was the strike for mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente. Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, said the estimates are that about 31,000 workers were involved with those strikes, which had an impact on the jobs report.

Zhao said that dip is temporary, so a lot of those jobs should bounce back in March when employees come back to work.

“But all of that being said, health care jobs growth was still slow, even if you do account for those striking workers,” Zhao said.

The U.S. went from adding 77,000 health care jobs in January to losing 28,000 in February. The 30,000 workers who went on strike is a blip, and doesn’t explain that entire gap.

Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said a medium-term trend for employment revolves around public funding, like Medicaid and Medicare. Government cuts mean less health care funding, even for the private sector jobs.

“If you look at a hospital, you look at doctor’s offices, whatever, much of their compensation is coming from government programs,” Baker said. “When those are cut, that means they have to tighten their belts. And part of that means fewer jobs.”

Strikes in the short term and funding cuts in the medium term both mean fewer health care jobs. But Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said the long-term outlook for health care jobs is much rosier.

“One month of data, this swing that we’re seeing today, it can happen. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it,” Challenger said. “When we look at the long term demographics of the country, we expect health care to be a segment that will grow for a decade.”

As the U.S. population gets older, the demand for health care jobs will keep growing.

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