Loan Brokerage Firms Actually See Employment Rise

If you’re looking for a patch of brightness in the national job numbers that came out Friday morning look at the mortgage brokerage employment line: broker firms added 2,300 loan officers and other staffers to their payrolls in April. (The mortgage numbers lag the national figures by one month.) What does this gain tell us? Those in the broker camp might suggest that onerous loan officer compensation terms installed by certain banks are forcing some LOs to jump ship from depositories to nonbanks. Then again, it could be an aberration. But the key to broker employment is wholesale growth. The more firms that enter the wholesale channel the greater the likelihood that brokerage firms will add staff. It appears that most of the wholesale growth continues to come from nonbanks, but not all.