Insurance Industry Employment Trends: 1990-2015 (February 2015)

The U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just published data as of February 2015 on detailed insurance industry employment, and the I.I.I. website contains updated multi-decade trend data in chart form. (The insurance industry/sector-specific data are not seasonally adjusted and are one month behind the national data; accordingly, the report released on April 3 provides national data for March 2015 and industry/sector-specific data for February 2015.) Data for the last few months are preliminary and are often revised later, but revisions are usually small. The latest report also changes the numbers for many prior months due to a recalculation of benchmark employment levels. The I.I.I. slides show employment trends for property/casualty (P/C), life, health (mainly medical expense) insurers, and reinsurers, agents & brokers, claims adjusters, and third-party administrators.

In February 2015, on a year-over-year basis, virtually every subsector of insurance industry employment was up, with many subsectors rising solidly. Even life carrier employment, which has generally trended downward, rose.

P/C carrier employment rose by 2,500 (0.5 percent) in February 2015 vs. January 2015, erasing the drops in December and January, and comparable to the sharp rise in November vs. October (2,600). For the 12 months ending in February 2015, P/C carrier employment rose by 10,400, or 2.0 percent to 526,100. P/C carrier employment has generally been rising for the last 12 months and is now back to where it was in the third quarter of 2012.

Employment by Life/annuity carriers rose in February 2015 vs. February 2014 (up 12,000, or 3.5 percent) to 354,800. Life/annuity carrier employment stayed in a range of 340,000 plus or minus 2,000 for all of 2013 and most of 2014, but it broke out of that corridor on the upside in June 2014. In prior years it was higher--in 2010, for example, it was more than 370,000 for the first half of the year and even though sinking in the second half topped 355,000 in every month but December. Life/annuity carrier employment has not fallen for 10 consecutive months (and rose in nine of those months). We can say that the long downward trend is over, although the gains are still small in historical context. The health carrier segment has been gaining jobs quite steadily for decades. In February 2015 vs. February 2014 it rose sharply (up 24,200, or 5.0 percent) to 509,100. At least some of this growth is undoubtedly connected with the flood of health insurance applications, purchases, and claims attributable to the Affordable Care Act, and some to population growth, but it is important to acknowledge that this rate of growth has been characteristic of this sector for decades—long before the ACA was proposed. The agent/broker segment gained 29,000 jobs in February 2015 vs. February 2014 (up 4.1 percent) to 727,800. After losing jobs in the Great Recession (from 682,100 in the first month of the recession, December 2007, to 652,900 in the first month of recovery (July 2009) and on to a trough of 638,200 in September 2010, the segment has been fairly steadily gaining jobs and passed the pre-recession peak of 684,500 reached in July 2007.

Among the smaller industry segments, reinsurance carrier employment in the U.S. fell by 500 to 24,900 in February 2015 vs. February 2014. Employment at independent claims--adjusting firms on a year-over-year basis for February 2015 fell by 4,100 to 49,500. Year-over-year employment in the category of third-party administration of insurance funds rose by 9,100 (5.4 percent) to 176,100. This category has grown quite steadily for over two decades, though not as fast as employment at medical expense insurers. It was set back slightly by the Great Recession but has generally added jobs since then.