The outlook for insurance jobs is getting brighter.

Having shaken off the bad news that insurance jobs were lost for the 12th consecutive month in October, looking into the indicators we see the following three points:

• Insurance job losses have slowed – 3,400 insurance jobs were lost in October, the lowest rate yet – we predict that November’s stats will show a plateau, or the first rise in over a year
• Unemployment has breached 10% – the all important 10% unemployment water mark has been reached, we think this milestone will be a perceived low point and will kick employers into gear into readdressing their employment policies
• US is out of recession - now that the worst is behind us with the 3rd quarter showing the economy growing at 3.5% annualized, although employment growth always lags behind economic growth, we think that the insurance & finance industries will pick up the pace quicker than other sectors

Insurance Jobs to Return

Based on the points above and looking at our own traffic, we believe that employers will accelerate their hiring pattens for the rest of November, before pausing in mid-December until the holiday season is over. January 2010 will see a positive return to growth in the insurance job industry.

Its been a long, dark journey but the green shoots are here (just before spring). Why not take advantage of our Buy One Get One Free offer running until the end of November. Use the coupon code GREEN.

Your forecast

As always you, the insurance job employer, have your finger on the pulse in terms of the hiring environment. Are you seeing a return to growth? Or will you be waiting a little longer? Let us know in the comments

After 10 consecutive months of insurance job losses, with 12,800 jobs being further deducted from the pool, there has been a lack of positive news for the insurance industry as a whole. The industry’s payroll sits now at 2.24 million as of the end of August, with the only sector of growth being health insurance (up 3% annually from 2008)

Insurance Jobs vs the economy

With the overall unemployment rate in the United States rising to 9.7%, many experts are saying that the 10% watermark could be the low point in the recession in terms of job losses.

Insurance jobs will lag behind an economic upturn, just us with every other indudstry, but with signs now of 5 straight months of growth, technically the economic recession will be over in 3 more.

Time for insurance jobs?

So is it time to start hiring for insurance jobs again? Insuranceworkforce.com has started to see more activity in September, with the post-summer push to start looking at talent again, however overall activity still remains low, as compared to 2008 and 2007.

Unless there are employers with specific talent needs, we think the best time to snare the top skillsets will be early October, once we are settled after the summer lull – good talent will wait for the right job.

What is your situation for insurance job recruiting? Will you be looking this quarter, or waiting until early 2010?

Jobseekers must be agile and adaptive in this environment, with some insurance job sectors performing much better than others – are you aligning your career goals with the insurance job sector with the lowest declines?

Back in March we showed the winners and losers in the insurance job industry, comparing figures from Jan 2008 to Jan 2009.

With updated statistics from mid-2008 to mid-2009, the state of the industry is as follows:

Sector	Change	Previous #	Current #	Difference
Title insurance jobs	-15.20%	79,810	69,400	-10,410
Claims adjuster jobs	-13.20%	53,544	47,300	-6,244
3rd party administration jobs	-6.30%	131,174	123,400	-7,774
Agents & brokers jobs	-3.70%	676,954	652,800	-24,154
Life insurance jobs	-3%	356,380	346,000	-10,380
Property/casualty jobs	-2.60%	491,762	479,300	-12,462
Reinsurance jobs	-0.35%	28,900	28,800	-100

Insurance Job Trends

The early wins in health insurance jobs, reinsurance jobs and life insurance jobs, which were up in January’s 2008 comparison all suffered overall losses. Title insurance jobs continued to be the worst affected, and life insurance has declined the most since January flipping from a 0.30% increase to a 3% decrease.

Salaries

The good news is that In terms of insurance job salaries, across every sector they rose from June 2008 to June 2009, except for third party administrators with a 3% decline in weekly earnings.

Futher Reading

Government employment figures available at Bureau of Labor statistics

Well we’ve seen a few opinions about the state of the insurance job market over March and April…but who are we to believe what its really like?

Resilience of the sector?

One opinion says that although insurance vacancies are down, there is still much movement in the market. According to Stuart Freeman of SMF Recruitment “replacement hiring is still happening. Insurance companies are cautious but we’re not seeing the blanket freezes like we did in banking”

This is due to a few reasons:

• families are seeking to safeguard their wealth by taking up more insurance policies, therefore creating demand for insurance jobs to satisfy the demand
• unlike banks, insurers didn’t recruit as aggressively during the good times, so less need for redundancies now
• commercial insurance is relatively secure – underwriting, broking, property, claims, liability all staying buoyant
• demand is still high for highly skilled insurance jobs

At insuranceworkforce.com we are definitely seeing replacement hiring for insurance jobs supplement an otherwise declining market, and demand within areas such as insurance underwriting jobs will the conditions above help the sector prevail?

We’re not through the worst yet

The other opinion depending on how you look at the figures is that we are still in for turbulent times for the insurance job search.

An analysis firm said that 33,100 finance and insurance jobs were lost in March as part of the 752,000 jobs reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The continuing downward trend and staggering overall job loss figures are having an impact on employers big and small, and the scarcity of new jobs is evident.

As insurance employers, what kind of conditions are you seeing? Are there any shoots of recovery, or do you think its going to be a bleak summer?