The number of non-bank positions in real estate finance expanded despite a month-over-month decline in the number of mortgage broker employees.
In October,
total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 161,000 from September, according to data reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
U.S. employment growth
slowed compared to the previous month, when an upwardly revised 191,000 positions were added to the nation’s labor force.
The number sank from a year previous, when the upwardly revised growth was a stellar 295,000.
Last month’s unemployment rate was 4.9 percent. The rate declined from 5.0 percent in September 2016 and October 2015.
“This was a solid jobs report, with steady employment growth and stronger wage growth,” National Association of Federal Credit Unions Chief Economist Curt Long said in a written statement. “While October’s job gains fell slightly below expectations, large upward revisions to prior months more than made up for it. Wage growth ticked up to 2.8 percent versus a year ago, which is the highest rate since 2009. From the Fed’s perspective, this report supports a rate hike in December.”
But despite Long’s upbeat assessment, bond yields declined in early trading, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note down to around 1.78 percent from yesterday’s close of
1.82 percent.
The BLS, a division of the Department of Labor, said the labor participation rate dipped to 62.8 percent in October 2016 from 62.9 percent a month earlier. But the rate improved from 62.5 percent a year earlier.
Within just real estate finance, 2,200 non-bank mortgage jobs were added from August, leaving 315,000 people working in the industry as of September 2016. The BLS reports mortgage data on a one-month lag.
The sector’s year-over-year growth was even more substantial, with 13,200 more non-bank mortgage jobs versus the upwardly revised September 2015 total.
The September 2016 mortgage total included 227,900 “real estate credit” jobs, growing from 225,100 a month prior and 221,000 a year prior.
But “mortgage and non-mortgage loan broker” jobs fell to 87,100 from 87,700 in August, though the category was up from 80,800 in September 2015.
A Mortgage Daily analysis of the BLS data and origination market share puts overall mortgage employment — including jobs at financial institutions — at an estimated 663,500 as of September of this year. The total was 658,900 the previous month and an upwardly revised 640,400 the same month last year.
The most-recent estimate included
288,800 mortgage jobs at banks, 59,700 home-lending positions at credit unions and the 315,000 employees reported by the BLS.
