US insurance brokerages & agencies shed jobs at record pace Q1

Employment in the broad US insurance industry may have rebounded some from a February decline, but that downward February move now looks increasingly precarious for the nation's brokerages and agencies.

Total industry employment may have risen by 4300 or 0.1% in March, but followed a steeper 6500 or 0.2% decline in February, some 2300 more than initially estimated, a data print from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicated.

The updated and more detailed view to February, which may yet be revised, shows agencies and brokerages with their second-worst month in history, behind only the one-month jolt delivered early in the pandemic in April 2020.

Agencies and brokerages had been the mainstay for job counts through the pandemic, offsetting job losses in insurance carriers that had run through Q2 2021 for P&C carriers and through Q1 2023 for life and health.

But the 28-months of uninterrupted job gains that started May 2020 had begun to totter from September 2022 before turning to the outright mayhem implied in February-March data.

Taken together with the revised view to January and February, the YTD decline in brokerage and agency jobs has now hit 9000, the worst three-month tally since the financial crisis at end-2008 and the worst start of a new year ever.

Job counts in direct P&C carriers appear more stable although the monthly gains posted from Q2 201 through at least Q3 2022 have stalled. Still, the 0.1% rise in March put the sub-segment at a record high not seen since the glory days of mass employment that ran Q4 1997 through Q1 2004.

Elsewhere, direct title insurers snapped an eleven month string of continuous job declines that had taken the employment count down by 12.3% through January.

Employment in direct life, health and medical insurance carriers came down notably after a prior month gain amid a wobbly period leaving the recovery since the Q2 2022 turnaround looking somewhat unconvincing.

The job count in claims adjusting was down for the fourth straight month and remains down ca 8% year on year.

For the broader US economy, total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 236,000 in March while the unemployment rate held largely steady at 3.5%.

Employment continued to trend up in leisure and hospitality, government, professional and business services, and health care, the BLS report indicated.

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