Mortgage Jobs Rose Again in July

Mortgage lenders added 7,200 full-time employees to their payrolls in July even though mortgage rates began to climb during the month.Data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that employment in the mortgage banker/broker sector rose from 414,500 in June to 421,700 in July. (There is a one-month lag in mortgage employment data due to recent changes in the BLS employment report.) Next month's employment report is likely to show some slowdown in hiring in August, but lenders are still processing a huge number of loans, and some firms continue to hire loan officers to increase their market share. Over the past 12 months, employment in the mortgage industry has increased by nearly 20%, or 66,900 new hires. Meanwhile, the U.S. jobless recovery continued in August. The BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls declined by 93,000 in August even though the unemployment rate edged down to 6.1% from 6.2% in July. The BLS can be found online at http://stats.bls.gov.