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?

It’s not all bad news in the U.S. insurance industry – even though the industry had 7,300 fewer positions at the end of 2008 compared to the beginning of 08 according to seasonally adjusted data released Jan. 9 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The worst period of 2008 was from November to December where the industry saw 5,200 jobs cut.

Some indications on where the industry might be moving could be found in the figures based on the just-released November 2008 data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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