U.S. banks that have been earning record profits from home loans are adding or transferring thousands of staff to catch up with demand for refinancing after shortages blocked homeowners from getting lower rates, Bloomberg News reported today. Employment tied to mortgages rose 9 percent this year through September to 285,000, the most since 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as lenders responded to Federal Reserve efforts to push down borrowing costs, President Barack Obama loosened requirements, and housing recovered from a six- year slump. Even as banks added staff, they failed to keep pace, and kept mortgage rates “much higher” than they should be to curb demand, said Vipul Jain, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. Those constraints are lifting after banks built up units to handle the highest level of refinancing since 2009.
