Insurance Agencies & Brokerages NAICS 524210

Nov 19, 2025 - Quiet Hurricane Season Creates Insurance Adjustor Skill Gaps

• The quiet 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, with no US landfalls and limited catastrophic events, has created challenges for insurance adjusters. While homeowners avoided major losses, adjusters faced a lack of deployable events, reducing opportunities for on-the-job experience and career growth. Seasoned professionals warn that this skill gap, combined with retirements of experienced staff (the “silver tsunami”), is weakening the industry. New adjusters are often left idle, some leaving the field or turning to public adjusting, while untrained “fill-in billers” are being deployed, sometimes leading to costly errors. Wildfires and severe storms in the U.S. have caused substantial losses but provided limited claims experience. The situation raises concerns about future readiness, mentorship, and the sustainability of the profession, especially as hype about quick, high-paying adjuster jobs misleads newcomers and undermines proper training and expertise.
• Several US states are considering implementing insurance price controls as a means to combat consistently rising premiums for property and casualty insurance. Illinois lawmakers are evaluating a bill that would grant regulators the authority to prevent insurers from calculating appropriate rates, effectively imposing government price controls on auto insurance. Similarly, Louisiana has empowered its insurance regulator to reject "excessive" premiums, while Michigan proposed a 10% reduction in auto insurance rates. In Georgia, a legislator introduced a bill to cap insurance rate increases at the inflation rate. These proposals aim to address affordability concerns but may lead to unintended consequences, such as reduced insurer participation and increased reliance on state-sponsored insurance mechanisms. Historically, price controls have resulted in market distortions, including shortages and decreased competition, as seen in California's insurance market, where stringent regulations led to insurers exiting the state.

• Soaring insurance costs in the US have intensified regulatory scrutiny as premiums for home and auto coverage climb at record rates. According to S&P Global, homeowners’ premiums rose 12.7% in 2023 and another 10.4% in 2024, with the average policy reaching about $1,900 in 2023, up nearly 50% from pre-pandemic levels. Over 5.3 million US households now pay more than $4,000 annually for property insurance. Auto insurance followed a similar trend, increasing 8.4% in 2023 and an additional 17.8% in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Rising claims from natural disasters, high repair costs, and tighter reinsurance markets have pushed insurers to seek steep rate hikes. But as affordability worsens, regulators in states like California, Florida, and Louisiana are pushing back, rejecting or capping increases and signaling a shift toward more active oversight of the insurance industry’s pricing practices.
• Employment at insurance agencies and brokerages stayed relatively flat so far this year, growing only 2% year over year in June 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. A new study from The Jacobson Group and Aon shows that 81% of insurance companies expect to grow revenue this year, but only 53% plan to hire more staff during the same period. In addition, 33% of companies said they would maintain the same staff levels this year, while 14% plan to actually decrease staff. Technology and AI integration is displacing some employees by taking over the heavy lifting of tasks such as claims processing and risk analysis. The industry has also relied heavily on raising premium rates for growth, rather than adding new policy holders, particularly in the property and casualty segment. Those factors also contribute to stagnant employment growth when policy numbers remain flat.