For the month, the sector's payrolls rose to 2.322 million from 2.319 million in March, a figure that was itself revised upward from BLS' prior estimate of 2.310 million. The sector has added 23,500 jobs since April 2007, up 1.02%. New insurance jobs represented nearly a quarter of the 96,000 nonfarm positions added over the past year, when total employment rose just 0.07%
Total nonfarm payrolls were down 20,000 jobs from March to 137,818,000 in April, with the construction, manufacturing and retail sectors taking the hardest hits. Following 240,000 job losses over the first three months of the year, the unemployment rate fell slightly from 5.1% to 5.0%.
Total insurance industry payrolls are reported on a seasonally adjusted basis, along with the current month's nonfarm payrolls, the first Friday of each month. Separately, data by industry segment ? broken out by various insurance carrier and noncarrier categories ? are available only on an unadjusted basis for the prior month.
Based on the just-released March 2008 data, reinsurers saw the greatest annual growth in payrolls, up 10.7% from March 2007 to 30,100. Third-party administrators saw payrolls rise 4.1% to 131,600, while life insurers were up 2.7% to 360,700; health insurers were up 1.9% to 434,600; and both property/casualty insurers and agents and brokers were up 0.9%, to 494,300 and 675,400, respectively.
Title insurers again saw significant job declines, down 12.1% from March 2007 to 87,100. Job losses also were seen among claims adjusters, down 1.9% to 51,600, and in the "other" segment, which declined 5.6% to 49,200.
Average weekly earnings for the industry's nonsupervisory positions rose 5.1% from March 2007 to March this year, from $813.56 to $855.41. Title insurance employees saw weekly earnings fall 5.4% to $789.61.
Agents and brokers saw the greatest gains, their weekly earnings rose 8.4% to $748.52. Employees of third-party administrators saw earnings up 6.6% to $786, claims adjusters were up 4.9% to $885.26, health insurers were up 4.5% to $891.98 and life insurers were up 3.8% to $906.75.
The property/casualty sector remained the most highly compensated, with employees averaging $967.05 a week, up 4.7% over March 2007. Reinsurance employees fell below the agent/broker sector to become the least well-compensated in the industry, down 0.7% to $742.06.
(By R.J. Lehmann, Washington bureau manager: raymond.lehmann@ambest.com)
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