The Insurance Adjuster Shortage: Who Replaces Retiring Veterans?

“We want veterans. We stopped making them.”

Contributed by Chris Stanley, Founder of IA Path

Entry-level adjuster postings are down nearly 50%, even as senior postings remain 80% above 2017 levels. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 21,600 openings each year, on average, for claims adjusters, appraisers, examiners, and investigators from 2025 to 2035. All are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to other occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.

It’s easy to see shrinking claims teams and assume AI is replacing adjusters. I see an industry leaning on AI and a shrinking pool of veterans because it can’t find enough qualified people, while its hiring playbook still assumes a workforce that no longer exists.

Is There an Insurance Adjuster Shortage?

Yes, and employers feel it. Seventy-two percent of insurers say labor shortages affect their ability to grow and manage claims, and 24% rank talent as their number-one challenge. Claims remains one of insurers’ most in-demand areas, just behind technology.

At the same time, many people want these roles. IA Path has trained more than 5,500 people, yet in IA Path’s experience, many applicants are skipped for interviews after sending resumes to hundreds of firms.

For decades, the industry hired from one talent pool: what I call the Fossil Workforce.

Why the Adjuster Shortage Is Getting Worse

The Fossil Workforce is made up of people who were trained and mentored on the job. They learned through years in the seat, with experienced colleagues nearby. They are the people who meet the two-to-five-year experience requirements in many job postings, and who can make claims decisions with the judgment that comes from seeing the same patterns over and over.

And they’re leaving. Claims Journal reports that Sedgwick’s annual Loss Adjusting Insights report found a quarter of claim adjusters are expected to retire by the end of 2027. The veterans who remain are already employed. The pool every job posting is drilling into is running dry.

Claims Stopped Hiring Beginners

While experience walks out one door, we’ve locked the other. Seventy-eight percent of insurers are most likely to add experienced people; only about one in five say entry-level hires are their greatest need. By January 2025, entry-level roles made up just 16% of insurers’ planned hires, the lowest share in the study.

I’ve seen what that costs. In 2016, I was an independent auto damage appraiser in the Denver market and was moving back East. I trained a replacement who wanted a stable career and was excited to start. I offered to mentor him and review his files so the company could keep coverage. They said he didn’t have enough experience. He became a coffee-shop manager and never returned to the industry.

That pattern repeats at carriers, independent adjusting firms, and collision centers. We don’t just have a talent problem. We have a taste problem.

Three Hiring Habits That Drain the Talent Pipeline

For years, experienced adjusters, estimators, and appraisers were treated as plug-and-play hires. Many companies stopped building development programs. In my experience, the pandemic accelerated that retreat. Three habits now make the shortage worse:

1. Post and poach. Post a job, then recruit someone from another company if no experienced candidate applies. That moves talent around without adding to the pool.
2. Bench and burn. Keep promising employees in their current roles because they’re needed there, then hire externally for the next level. Those employees get frustrated and leave the company, or the industry.
3. Deploy and destroy. Send new hires into the field without real training or mentorship, hand them a veteran’s workload, and tell them to sink or swim. In conversations with more than 50 independent adjusting firms, I’ve heard that only about a quarter of people on their first catastrophe deployment last more than a week. General turnover estimates for salaried roles often put replacement costs at 50% to 200% of salary.

We can’t make more of the Fossil Workforce quickly. So who should we hire?

Hire the Right Human in the Room

Stop hiring only for the right resume. Look for a person with three traits:

• Interested. They want the industry, the role, and the work. Genuine interest helps people stay and contributes energy to the team.
• Invested. They have taken steps to prepare and are ready to put in the effort to learn, rather than waiting for the employer to do everything.
• Intelligent. They can read a situation and bring together practical, emotional, and social judgment: assessing the damaged vehicle, understanding what its owner is feeling, and navigating the relationship among the shop, carrier, and customer.

As AI becomes a larger part of insurance, having the right humans in the room will matter even more. The companies that build a repeatable way to identify and develop people won’t have to wait years for another generation of experience. They can change what they look for and start growing it.

Part 2: How to teach adjusters the “gut calls” veterans rely on.