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Life Health > Running Your Business

Life and Health Job Outlook Improves for 2024

By Allison Bell

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U.S. life and health insurers are more optimistic about hiring than they were a year ago, and they are especially hungry for actuaries, operations staffers and technology specialists.

Insurers predict that they will increase their employee count by a total of 0.92% over the next 12 months, according to the latest insurance staffing market survey organized by the Jacobson Group and Aon’s Ward Benchmarking unit.

The projected 2024 increase is lower than the 1.69% increase that the companies predicted in 2022, but it’s up from the 0.51% increase included in the 2023 survey results.

Life and health insurers ended up with stronger demand for workers in 2023 than they expected: About 14% said they would cut staffing, but only 12% went ahead with that. This year, the percentage of insurers expecting to increase staffing or hold it steady has increased to 88%, from 86% a year ago.

The survey team does not say how many insurers participate in the survey, but about 19% of the total are life and health insurers.

What it means: Life and health insurers still have plenty of jobs to fill.

Opening types: The survey team asked about hiring plans for 11 types of workers. Companies ranked the likelihood they would increase staffing for each type of position on a 7-point scale, with 7 meaning that a company was most likely to increase staffing in that area.

Life and health insurers said they were at least moderately likely to expect to increase staffing in every area.

The staffing increase likelihood was close to 7 for actuaries and over 5.5 for operations workers and information technology workers.

The staffing increase likelihood for sales and marketing professionals was a little over 4.

The survey team did not break out hiring difficulty by sector. But, for both life and health insurers and for property and casualty insurers, finding qualified actuaries, executives, data analytics, information technologists and underwriters has been especially difficult.

Credit: Adobe Stock

Allison Bell

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