Mortgage Jobs Still Growing

Mortgage lenders added 4,800 employees to their payrolls in June, when it looked like the refinancing boom would never end and the average interest rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to around 5.2%.According to data released Aug. 1 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the mortgage banker/broker sector jumped from 409,600 in May to 414,400 in June. (There is a one-month lag in getting mortgage industry data due to recent changes in the BLS employment report.) Over the past 12 months, employment in the mortgage industry has increased by 19%, or 66,900 new hires. But the employment situation in many other sectors of the economy remains bleak, particularly in manufacturing. While the unemployment rate declined from 6.4% in June to 6.2% in July, the economy lost another 44,000 jobs last month. Since January, the number of jobs has declined by 486,000, the BLS said.