The collective staff size for the country’s mortgage firms has expanded for five consecutive months. The picture was mixed, however, for all U.S. industries — with unemployment worsening and job expansion improving.
The number of people working in the mortgage business was 285,000 during the month of September.
Mortgage industry headcount grew from August, when staffing stood at a revised 281,300 employees. Mortgage jobs have expanded each month since April, when total staffing was a revised 266,600.
In September of last year, total employees in the industry numbered a revised 262,000, according to employment data made available Friday by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Behind September’s stronger numbers were companies like Quicken Loans Inc., where headcount jumped to 8,000 as of Sept. 30 from 5,500 three months earlier; Nationstar Mortgage LLC, which reportedly hired 800 people in the third quarter; and Stearns Lending, which reported that headcount grew to 1,302 as of the end of the third quarter from 1,154 at the end of the second quarter;
Mortgage employment consists of employees classified as “real estate credit” and “mortgage and nonmortgage loan brokers.”
The “real estate credit” portion climbed to 218,800 from a revised 215,700 in August and was a revised 208,500 during the same month in 2011.
“Mortgage and nonmortgage loan brokers” employees crept up to 66,200 jobs from 65,600 a month earlier and a revised 53,500 a year earlier.
The BLS reported that total nonfarm payroll employment across all industries rose by 171,000 jobs during October — a strong showing that had the stock market and the 10-year Treasury yield both higher during early trading.
But tempering the positive data was the unemployment rate, which climbed to 7.9 percent in October from 7.8 percent the prior month. However, unemployment has improved substantially from October 2011, when 9.0 percent of the U.S. workforce was without a job.
