US insurance jobs down Dec-Jan; eyes on P&C & brokerages & agencies

The broad US insurance industry may have shed as many as 5100 jobs in January amid further suggestion that the hiring in P&C carriers and in brokerage and agencies has peaked.

December employment sums were revised down from a more optimistic initial reading, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also indicated in its data release. The industry shed a handful of jobs in December, rather than the 1500 job growth initially reported.

That December decline comes amid increasing signs that gains in both the brokerage and agency category and among direct P&C carriers has stalled.

Employment in agencies and brokerages, the sole source of job growth through much of the pandemic, was down fractionally for the second month in a row after breaking its long-running growth trend and turning lightly volatile as of September. Brokerages and agencies now have 87,000 more employees than ahead of the pandemic, never having lost more than a month or two worth of hiring for the pandemic.

P&C direct carriers, where the jobs recovery only began in May 2021, has been seemingly off the growth trend only since the October reading. The group is still 28,000 jobs above its pre-pandemic level.

Headline job numbers are more seriously dented by the continuing job losses in title insurance, down for the tenth straight month a total loss of nearly 11,000 jobs.

The January job losses, if confirmed, would represent only a 0.2% decline for the industry, but cut the 12M gain to a mere 1.5%, preliminary data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggested.

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