Despite a weak report on the U.S. job market, the number of people working in real estate finance has reached the highest level in nearly 10 years.
U.S. nonfarm payroll employment grew by 156,000 during September, retreating from an already weak but upwardly revised 167,000 the prior month.
The report released Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, showed stronger growth than September 2015’s upwardly revised 149,000.
The unemployment rate worsened to 5.0 percent from 4.9 percent in August but was still lower than 5.1 percent a year earlier.
“The September employment data met expectations, roughly speaking,” National Association of Federal Credit Unions Chief Economist Curt Long said in a statement. “While job growth was slightly less than anticipated, key areas like labor force participation and wage growth ticked up.”
The labor participation rate widened to 62.9 percent last month from 62.8 percent
in the previous report and 62.4 percent in the year-previous report.
“The results keep the Fed on track to raise rates in December,” NAFCU’s Long added.
BLS data indicate that non-bank mortgage employment totaled
312,800 in August 2016.
Based on year-end BLS statistics tables maintained by Mortgage Daily, the last time any year finished with that many mortgage jobs was in December 2006, when the number was 494,700.
Mortgage jobs came to an upwardly revised 311,900 in July
and worked out to an upwardly revised 300,200 in August of last year.
The August 2016 total reflected 225,100 workers classified as “real estate credit,” up by a hundred from the prior month
and 5,800 more jobs than the same month in 2015.
“Mortgage and nonmortgage loan brokers” accounted for
another 87,700 of the most-recent mortgage total, 800 people more than a month earlier and 6,800 more jobs than a year earlier.
Including mortgage staffing at financial institutions, Mortgage Daily estimates that there were approximately 658,900 people employed in home-lending positions as of Aug. 31, 2016.
Overall industry headcount was an upwardly revised 657,000 as of the end of July and an upwardly revised
637,000 the same month last year.
The estimated August 2016 mortgage total was comprised of 286,800 mortgage jobs at banks, 59,300 credit union positions in residential lending and the 312,800 non-bank jobs reported by the BLS.
