Mortgage Industry Adds Jobs

Mortgage lenders added 6,100 full-time employees to their payrolls in May, according the June employment report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.The BLS report shows that jobs in the mortgage banking/broker sector rose from 448,900 in April to 454,900 in May. [There is a one-month lag in BLS reporting of mortgage sector employment data.] Mortgage companies have been steadily increasing their payrolls since January and nearly all the job losses last year have been erased. The hiring continued into May even though mortgage rates hit 6.32%. The higher rates slowed refinancings, but purchase mortgage activity remained strong. Friday's jobs report shows that the U.S. economy generated 112,000 new jobs in June, down from 235,000 in May. The unemployment rate remained at 5.6%.