A strong employment report has already driven up interest rates. Despite the strength, the number of non-bank mortgages jobs declined by nearly 4,000 positions.
Among all U.S. industries, there were 148.177 million nonfarm jobs as of Feb. 28, according to data reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That turned out to be a whopping 313,000 more jobs than the prior month. Job growth expanded from an upwardly revised 239,000 positions added in January.
In February 2017, the nonfarm payroll growth was
a downwardly revised 200,000.
Last month’s unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent —
the lowest rate since December 2000 when it landed at 3.9 percent. Unemployment was 4.7 percent in February 2017.
The labor force participation rate climbed to 63.0 percent in February 2018 from 62.7 percent a month earlier and 62.9 percent a year earlier.
The solid report had the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which is tracked by fixed mortgage rates, at 2.90 percent in early trading, jumping from 2.86 percent as of yesterday’s close.
While the overall jobs data was very favorable, data for just the mortgage industry wasn’t.
According to the BLS, there were 337,200 non-bank mortgage jobs as of January, sinking from a downwardly revised 341,100 in the final month of last year.
Mortgage data is reported on a one-month lag.
Industry headcount, however, was still up from a downwardly revised 331,600 in January 2017.
January 2018’s non-bank mortgage staffing consisted of 244,700 “real estate credit” positions and 92,500 “mortgage and nonmortgage loan brokers.”
Based on an extrapolation of the BLS data using origination market share, Mortgage Daily estimates that total mortgage industry employment, including jobs at financial institutions, was 656,800 in the first month of this year.
The estimate consisted of 257,000 home-lending positions at banks, 62,600 mortgage jobs at credit unions and the 337,200 employees reported by the BLS.
