March was a good month for the insurance industry – particularly for independent agents and brokers.
According to a report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agent/broker segment of the insurance industry gained 27,500 jobs this March, up 3.9% from the same month last year. There are now 728,900 agents and brokers in the US – an industry high point after losing jobs during the Great Recession.
Similar trends cropped up throughout the industry. Employment by life/annuity carriers also rose 3.9% in March, to 355,500, while property/casualty carrier employment rose slightly – 0.2% - to 527,000 with a gain of 900 jobs. Employment in that sector is now “back to where it was” in mid-2012, according to Insurance Information Institute President and economist Robert Hartwig.
The health carrier segment, meanwhile, rose a significant 5.1% in March, bringing total employment to 510,800. The growth in this subsector of the industry has been steady thanks to the advent of the Affordable Care Act and some general population growth.
However, Hartwig notes that “this rate of growth has been characteristic of the sector for decdes – long before the ACA was proposed.”
The industry employment growth was so great, that GreatInsuranceJobs.com has forecasted a record employment year in 2015 with 84% of employers reporting jobs open at their companies, firms or agencies.
Despite the banner year, however, an industry-wide hiring crisis still lingers.
“We expect 2015 to be a record year for hiring in insurance,” said GreatInsuranceJobs.com President and Co-Founder Scott Kotroba. “But for hiring managers, the greatest challenge mentioned by more than 80% of the employers is the difficulty of finding qualified talent.”
Employers identified the following as the top ten challenges in hiring the next generation of insurance professionals:
- Unqualified applicants
- Finding technology talent
- Retirement of the workforce
- Recruiting budgets remain low
- Hard to find sales candidates
- Salary regulations
- Technology, customer service and underwriting jobs are hard to fill
- Difficult to find bilingual candidates
- No fit for company culture
- Finding talent in remote areas