Employment Trends in Finance and Insurance
After climbing strongly following subtle job losses during the pandemic, the finance and insurance sector seems to have peaked in 2023, at least for now. The sector hit a high of 6.27 million employees in July of 2023, the sector has experienced losses in every month since. In December, the sector lost 2,400 net jobs. Most of these losses occurred in the financial sector, while insurance and real estate continued to grow at a steady, if small, clip. Insurance carriers gained 4,500 net new employees in December, hotter than the three-month trend. Meanwhile real estate gained 4,300. It may be tempting to attribute real estate’s increase to the dip in mortgage rates following the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate decision in December. However, it’s likely too soon to see the impact of slightly lower mortgage rates on the subsector. As the Federal Reserve leans into the soft landing and the housing market picks back up, we will continue to watch the subsector.
Credit intermediation suffered losses in December, shedding 6,200 jobs in the last month of the year. Additionally, the securities and commodities subsector experienced a loss of just 700 net jobs.
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