In good news for the insurance industry, the latest U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for June 2015 shows that, on a year-over-year basis, virtually every subsector of insurance industry employment was up, with many subsectors rising solidly.

Property and casualty (P&C) carrier employment rose by 3,400 (+0.6%) in June 2015 vs. May 2015, said Dr. Robert P. Hartwig, CPCU, president of the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.). The direction of June-over-May employment change for the P&C industry is often up (since 1990, P&C carrier employment has risen 17 times and fallen nine times) but this is the largest month-over-month rise since March 1998. For the 12 months ending in June 2015, P&C carrier employment rose by 6,500, or 1.2% to 527,900. According to Hartwig, P&C carrier employment has generally been rising for the last 18 months and is now back to where it was in the late summer of 2012.

The agent/broker segment gained 21,800 jobs in June 2015 vs. June 2014 (up 3.1%) to 734,000. After losing jobs in the Great Recession—from 682,100 in the first month of the recession (December 2007) to 652,900 in the first month of recovery (July 2009) and on to a trough of 638,200 in September 2010—the segment has been fairly steadily gaining jobs and passed the pre-recession peak of 684,500 reached in July 2007, Hartwig noted. From the recent trough through June 2015, this segment has gained 95,800 jobs (up 15.0%).