On the heels of last week’s disheartening government report on rising U.S. unemployment rates, federal officials revealed that employment in the mortgage industry also fell to a new low this summer. Mortgage firms shed 6,100 full-time jobs from their payrolls in August, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As DS News previously reported, the number of mortgage workers nationwide had actually risen in July, to 267,300. But August’s drop left the full-time ranks of bankers and brokers at a new low of 261,200. That news came as labor data last Friday showed the U.S. economy had cut 263,000 jobs in September, bringing the national unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent the previous month. Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, told media that despite the rise in servicing volumes and demand for loan modifications, new hiring has been confined largely to freelance and contract workers, and any full-time hires were offset by mergers, consolidations and layoffs.

Worse still, the mortgage sector’s August losses did not take into account the summer collapse of lending and servicing giant Taylor, Bean and Whitaker. A top-ten national servicer, and one of the most popular for federally guaranteed mortgages, Taylor was forced to shutter after federal authorities cut off its business for alleged irregularities in its business practices. Those mortgage firm worker losses are likely to be reflected in the September federal job figures, where yet another all-time low is likely, Brinkmann said.