Jacobson Sees Life and Health Labor Demand Cooling
But 65% of the companies said they expect to increase staffing this year.
U.S. life and health insurers are less optimistic about hiring now than they were a year ago, but they still hope to add employees.
They are expecting to increase employment by an average of 0.51% over the next 12 months, according to a survey organized by the Jacobson Group and Aon’s Ward Benchmarking unit.
That’s down from a projected growth rate of 1.69% in the survey report for the 2022 hiring year.
What It Means
Some of the life insurers backing your clients’ life insurance policies and annuity contracts may have been facing more turbulence than they had expected.
The Survey
Jacobson is a Chicago-based recruiter.
Ward organizes insurance company operations surveys.
The firms use a voluntary employer survey to generate the hiring outlook data.
What Happened in 2022
At the beginning of 2022, 65% of the survey participants thought they would add employees, 32% thought they would maintain their current size, and just 3% thought they would shrink.
In reality, 64% of the life insurers stayed the same size, 21% cut the number of employees and just 14% added employees.
The size decrease might be partly due to the effects of a tight labor market: 29% of the life and health companies said hiring has gotten harder.
The Outlook
About 93% of the life and health companies participating expect revenue to rise this year, and 65% said they expect to increase staffing.
Only 14% predicted that they’d cut staffing.
Life and health insurers are most interested in hiring technology, sales, marketing and actuarial talent, and least interested in hiring executives, underwriters, accountants, compliance people and claim administrators.
Life and health insurers may not have great appeal for digital nomads: 93% expect employees to come into the office at least one day per week, and 21% expect in-office time requirements to increase in the next six months.
(Image: Adobe)