P&C carriers cut headcounts again; brokers & agencies sweep up
US direct P&C insurance carriers cut employment for the fourth month running in February, questioning a period of job stability following the post-pandemic rebound and taking the job count down to levels not seen since mid-2022, preliminary data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicated.
Direct P&C carriers may have cut 1800 jobs in February to bring the four-month tally to some 4800, following a sizeable downward revision of data for January, the BLS dataset indicated. That puts direct P&C carriers together with the long-suffering group of title insurers as the only major segments with annual declines in job counts.
The current P&C job count is now right where it was when the post-pandemic jobs recovery started to peter out in mid-2022 and below the range held in the interim, albeit still 3.8% above pre-pandemic levels.
Losses haven’t been enough to tip the scales on the broader US insurance industry as a whole, which escaped February with a fractional estimated gain of 900 jobs, led by continued strong gains for agencies and brokerages, unstoppable hirers since the pandemic first hit.
Agencies and brokerages came to the rescue yet again, as they have done nearly ceaselessly since the onslaught of the pandemic. Agencies and brokerages added 2500 jobs net in February for a 0.3% monthly increase. They’ve added nearly 30,800 jobs over the past 12 months and an astonishing 138,000 since a low hit in the first month of the pandemic after which job counts almost only ever risen.
Direct life, health and medical insurance carriers continue their plodding and often furtive attempts to scratch back pandemic-era job losses. The segment added ca. 600 jobs in February, but has still only regained some 40% of the jobs lost during the pandemic.
Not to be forgotten in the monthly data release, BLS’s first view to the broad US insurance industry’s total employment in March: fractionally down by an estimated ca 300 jobs overall.
For the broader US economy, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 303,000 in March and the unemployment rate held nearly flat at 3.8%, the BLS said. Job gains were said to have occurred in health care, government, and construction.
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