Overall Insurance Labor Demand Looks Strong: Jobs Board Firm

Insurance agents and financial advisors may feel crushing pressure from changes in compensation models and insurance companies’ strategy.

Especially in the individual health insurance market, agents have been having a hard time persuading insurers to offer sales commissions, or even to pay the commissions already earned.

In spite of all that turmoil, from the perspective of a company that runs a job notice board for the insurance industry, the overall state of the U.S. insurance industry job market looks terrific.

(Related: 3 Opportunities in the Health Gap Market)

GreatInsuranceJobs.com, the Orlando, Florida-based jobs board company, recently conducted a telephone survey of 72 companies that are active in the insurance industry. Those insurers, distributors and plan administrators employ about 360,000 people, or about 10% of all U.S. workers.

Roger Lear, a recruiter who co-founded GreatInsuranceJobs.com, says the results show that, in spite of all of the upheaval and angst in some parts of the insurance industry, the industry as a whole as “a lot of jobs.”

In 2016, “almost all areas of the insurance industry increased their size,” Lear writes in a report on the survey findings.

The companies surveyed had 10,874 open jobs in February alone, or about one open job for every 36 employees, Lear says.

Here’s a look at four highlights from Lear’s report.

(Image: Bram Janssens/Hemera-Thinkstock)

1. The present looks good.

The share of participating employers that said they had current insurance job openings in February stood at 93%. That was up from 91% a year earlier, and it was the highest level GreatInsuranceJobs.com has recorded since 2009, when the firm began conducting the job outlook surveys.