Mortgage companies cut 3,200 full-time employees from their payrolls in January, according to government figures released Friday morning.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment in the mortgage industry fell to 262,100 positions in January from 265,300 in December.
Overall, the number of jobs in the mortgage banking and broker sector fell nearly 4% from a year ago.
The government offers no details on where the job cuts came from but it's likely that a good chunk of the losses came from Bank of America which has been cutting thousands of mortgage workers for the past year.
Meanwhile, BLS reported that the U.S. economy overall created 227,000 new jobs in February. Hiring in January was revised upwards to 284,000 from 243,000. (The mortgage job numbers lag the U.S. total by one month.)
January marks the third straight month in which the economy has generated more than 200,000 new jobs. Jobs in construction were unchanged in February after builders added 21,000 workers to their payrolls in January.
Friday's jobs report also shows the U.S. unemployment rate in February was unchanged at 8.3%.
