Mortgage Job Decline Continues

Mortgage lenders reduced their payrolls in December by 5,800 full-time employees, according to the latest government report.The Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday show that employment in the mortgage banker/broker sector fell from 444,700 in November to 438,900 in December. Lenders have been trimming their payrolls since September, when the demand for refinancings fell dramatically. Meanwhile, the BLS report shows that the economy created 112,000 jobs in January, and the December jobs creation number was revised upward from 1,000 to 16,000. The unemployment rate fell slightly, to 5.6%. (There is a one-month lag in the mortgage employment data due to changes made by the Labor Department last year in its employment report.) The BLS can be found online at http://stats.bls.gov.