Mortgage industry seeing highest job growth in 5 years

Mortgage employers expanded their monthly payrolls, making a significant gain over the past year. The last time mortgage staffing was this strong was during the George W. Bush administration.

Government data released Friday indicate that 292,800 employees were working in real estate finance during April. The data for April is preliminary.

Mortgage jobs reached their highest level since September 2008, when a revised 302,400 people were employed in the mortgage industry.

In March of this year, a revised 289,800 employees were classified as mortgage, according to the data released Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mortgage employment in April 2012 was at a revised 262,300.

April activity was helped by 500 planned hirings at Quicken Loans Inc. during the second quarter, 150 second-quarter job additions at Carrington Mortgage Services LLC and another 150 second-quarter hirings expected at United Shore Financial Services.

Positions classified as “real estate credit” numbered 212,900, inching up from 212,400 in March.

The count has grown from a year earlier, when the number was 197,700.

The ranks of “mortgage and nonmortgage loan brokers” grew to 79,900 from the previous month’s 77,400 and the year earlier’s 64,600.

Across all U.S. industries, nonfarm payroll employment increased by 175,000 during May, according to the BLS. That was a little better than the 165,000 growth in payrolls in April.

Word of the national employment data was well received by the stock market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 140 points in early trading Friday.

But bond yields were lower, as the price of the 10-year Treasury note — which moves inversely to the yield — was down 12/32 this morning.

May’s unemployment rate climbed to 7.6 percent from 7.5 percent.

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