Even though the mortgage industry is seeing signs of declining production, employment in the sector surged to a new high in September, according to government figures released Nov. 4.Mortgage banking and brokerage firms employed 529,300 full-timers at the end of September -- a 10% gain compared with the total recorded in the same month last year and a 0.68% increase from the total in August. The Department of Labor says the "real estate credit" industry (mortgage bankers) employed 392,900 workers at September's end while mortgage and "nonmortgage" loan brokers employed 136,400. (Some nonmortgage jobs are probably represented in the numbers.) Mortgage rates have been rising over the past month. As MortgageWire neared its deadline, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note stood at 4.66%.
