Back in July, I wrote about what we were seeing in the tightening insurance labor market and included some of the research that our talented marketing department put together in order to help us identify the long-trend causes. The just released September PULSE seems to confirm the trend: a labor market much tighter than the general labor market.
The insurance unemployment rate of 2.5 percent in August is far below the 7.3 percent in the general U.S. economy and is also the lowest number we have seen since mid-2008. If you are interested in seeing the historical record, take a look at the BLS data series. This number will bounce around over the coming months – it always does – but my prediction is that this is just one more milestone in a long term continuing trend and that we will see sub 2 percent rates in the future.