The mortgage industry continued to shed jobs in March, the third straight month in which full-time employment in the sector took a dive, according to government figures released Friday morning.
Overall, mortgage banking-related employment is down 7.2% from a year ago.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that mortgage companies trimmed their payrolls by 2,800 full-timers during the month with total industry employment declining to 244,900.
Banks, nonbanks, thrifts and credit unions have been quietly cutting origination staffers since February after early December’s application boom began to fade. (In April, Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America both announced large scale back office layoffs of mortgage workers, but those figures would not be reflected in the March numbers.)
Meanwhile, Friday's overall jobs report shows that U.S. companies hired 268,000 new employees in April, better than expected, but the unemployment rate edged up 0.2% in April from the prior month. (There is a one-month lag in BLS reporting of employment data in the mortgage industry.)
If sustained, this level of hiring should help bring down residential delinquency rates, increase household formation and raise demand for housing.
