Mortgage Jobs Declined 115K in '07

Mortgage companies cut 5,600 full-time employees from the payrolls in December to end a terrible year in which 114,600 workers -- nearly a quarter of the industry's work force -- lost their jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment in the mortgage banker/broker sector fell from 374,600 in November to 369,000 in December -- down 23.7% from that of December 2006. (The BLS revised all the employment numbers in its latest report.) The mortgage industry started the year with 483,600 employees. But the subprime meltdown that sent the credit markets reeling forced scores of mortgage companies to shut their doors and others to cut their staffs. Industry employment may stabilize or even rise in coming months, however, due to an increase in refinancings and hiring by servicers to deal with rising defaults and resets of adjustable-rate subprime mortgages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics can be found online at http://stats.bls.gov.