San Antonio – The deep recession of the last two years will leave scars that will be with the U.S. economy for a decade in the form of unemployment, and those in the P&C insurance industry will be no exception, most notably those in claim adjusting.

That statement came yesterday morning from the insurance industry's biggest proponent, Dr. Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I., www.iii.org) as he addressed hundreds of claim professionals at the Property Loss Research Bureau/Liability Insurance Research Bureau's (PLRB/LIRB) annual claim conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Hartwig said that since the middle of 2008, employment in the P&C insurance industry has hit a record low as a result of the economic downturn. As a whole, he said that employment in the P&C industry was down almost five percent since the recession began, nearly matching the 6.1 percent decrease in employment in the overall U.S. economy.