There were 5,736,000 IT jobs in April 2011 compared to 5,755,000 in April 2012, indicating a loss of 19,000 jobs in just one year, according to
“Insurance is a shrinking market because it’s difficult to find positions,” Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis told Insurance Networking News. “A fair number of IT workers have left the insurance industry and are looking for positions elsewhere. It will be exciting to see what opportunities might open up after the elections in November.”
The national mandate for the use of medical records is one area of hope among health insurance IT workers. The transition to new, more secure claims transmission standards are all elements of the national digital records mandate to migrate health care providers to new technology.
“Much of the job activity in the IT area is associated with electronic medical records. The mandate helps the job market but if you remove the mandate, there’d be even less jobs because everything else is very stagnant,” said Janulaitis.
One scenario that could reverse the dwindling IT job market among insurers is if Congress passes a law allowing health insurers to write policies across state lines, according to Janulaitis. The move could create more competition among providers and create IT jobs.
“There’s a host of requirements that would need to be met, such as in state reporting and intra state reporting, which requires a lot of processing. Processing presents opportunity for IT workers,” said Janulaitis.
Areas of IT job growth are in the Northeast and parts of the West Coast, specifically Boston and Palo Alto. The news isn’t so good in Los Angeles, where the unemployment rate is edging in at 11 percent, said Janulaitis.
Another area of potential job growth is in property/casualty insurance.
“There are jobs in the claims processing area. Processes make it easier for claims adjustors to process claims. It‘s not unusual for insurers to photograph storm damage and use it for documentation to complete a claim,” said Janulaitis. “They have to be able to capture all the business records and be able to retrieve them, which is where IT workers come into the picture.”
