Almost a year to the day after Progressive announced it would hire more than 10,000 people to fill claims, IT and legal roles in 2024, the nation’s second largest auto insurer said it now has 12,000 job openings.

As was the case with the similar statement released in late April last year, Progressive said yesterday that year-over-year increases in the number of policies in force and net premiums written are fueling its demand for new hires—this time in claims, customer call centers and legal areas.

Related article: Growing Progressive Set to Hire 10,000+ in Claims, IT, Other Roles

Progressive’s in-force policy counts grew 18 percent to nearly 35 million across all lines of business in 2024, with personal auto policies jumping 22 percent to 23.8 million and personal property (homeowners and renters) policies up 14 percent to 3.5 million.

Progressive wrote 5 million more policies across all lines in 2024 vs. 2023, which was more than twice the previous highest annual rate of policy growth in the company’s history, John Murphy, Progressive’s president of claims, reported during a fourth-quarter 2024 earnings conference call in early March.

Total net premiums climbed 21 percent to $74.4 billion last year, with a 24 percent boost in personal auto premiums to $60.4 billion fueling the overall jump.

“Premium grew by nearly $13 billion in this single calendar year” in 2024, Murphy said, referring to the combined total for all lines that Progressive writes. That is equivalent to adding the premium of the eighth-largest auto insurer in calendar year 2023,” he said. The increase in premiums in 2024 was roughly $1 billion more than Progressive wrote for the entire year 2003, he added.

Related article: Progressive: Policies Grow Faster Than Workforce

While much of that conference call was devoted to Progressive’s use of technology (in the claims area, in particular), and the fact that the technology enabled the insurer to continue to grow policies and premiums without the same surge in headcount, executives were clear to point out that the workforce has still been growing, even if it’s been at a slower pace than policy counts. They showed that headcount more than doubled in the past decade—to more than 66,000 in 2024 from less than 30,000 in 2014.

“The company has continued its [business] growth in the new calendar year by adding 1.3 million policies in force during the first quarter,” yesterday’s Progressive statement said.

“To support these continued positive trends, market share gain and growing customer base, Progressive has continued to increase its workforce, and this year is no different as the company is actively seeking qualified candidates to fill a multitude of roles.”

According to the statement, these roles include working with:

• Progressive’s claims team, in entry-level positions such as claims adjuster trainee and a new opportunity, field adjuster trainee, as well as experienced roles like claims specialist and claims adjuster auto damage. While most roles are remote, there are some hybrid and in-person opportunities in areas such as Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, New York and South Carolina.
• Progressive’s customer care organization, where numerous call center positions are available across the country, including Spanish bilingual representatives and licensed insurance agents.
• The company’s in-house legal counsel. Progressive is seeking defenses attorneys in Sherman Oaks, Calif.; Atlanta, Ga.; and Long Island, N.Y.; as well as across multiple cities in Florida and Texas.

Additional roles available include territory sales reps, data scientists and production print mail specialists.

The media statement highlighted the fact that Progressive is committed to “flexible workplace offerings with a mix of remote, in-office and hybrid roles available across claims, customer care, IT, analyst, legal and corporate functions.”

“Progressive continues to prove that our culture is not defined or limited by our physical spaces. By having a flexible workplace approach, it not only allows us to meet the needs of our current employees but to also reach job seekers where they are,” said Neil Lenane, Progressive Business Leader of Talent Acquisition, in the media statement about the intention to hire 12,000 new employees.

According to the statement, the company’s talent acquisition team recently launched “Destination: Progress,” an employer brand campaign highlighting career growth opportunities, which can be seen across candidate-facing platforms such as the career site and social channels. The intent is to show job seekers that although they may come to Progressive for a job, they can stay for a career.

The statement also refers to Career Central, an internal career development hub with learning tools that include leadership development, mentorship and learning plans to support and encourage employees to grow and advance their careers within the company.

On quarterly earnings conference calls and in written annual reports, executives often refer to the four strategy pillars that drive the company, with “Ensuring that our people and culture collectively remain our most powerful source of competitive advantage” typically listed first among them. (Others are meeting customer needs, maintaining a leading brand and offering competitive prices.)

Chief Executive Officer Tricia Griffith’s letter to shareholders in the 2024 annual report focused on the theme of empathy and highlighted several stories about the patience, compassion and understanding Progressive employees demonstrated to customers last year. In describing the “People and Culture” pillar, she also discussed Progressive’s definition of the terms diversity, equity and inclusion and briefly addressed the question of whether Progressive will retire the three words that have “taken on different meanings in different contexts outside our walls.”

“To be sure, these aren’t the only words I could use to describe the value we place on being kind to each other, being open to new people and ideas, welcoming respectful disagreement, and capitalizing on our individual differences to make us stronger as a team,” she wrote. “Regardless of the words we use, we’ll never change our commitment to each other and to sustaining a culture where every one of us can risk, learn and grow.”

(Editor’s Note: As of the date of this writing, the words remained on the website on pages discussing the purpose—”to help people move forward and live fully.” Many other property/casualty insurers have redesigned their “about us” pages to drop the words diversity, equity and inclusion.)

During the fourth-quarter call, Murphy introduced the “people and culture” strategy pillar by noting that high employee satisfaction and brand recognition make Progressive a sought-after destination for job seekers. That affords Progressive the opportunity to be selective in maintaining a “culture of execution excellence” that’s hard to replicate, he said. “We hire less than 3 percent of people who apply for jobs at Progressive,” he reported.

Progressive’s 66,000-plus employee total is similar to an unchanged 67,000 employee count that the nation’s largest property/casualty and auto insurer, State Farm, has reported with its 2021-2024 financial results. Both are significantly higher than the third-ranked auto insurer, GEICO, which reported a workforce count of 28,247 for 2024 in Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report. GEICO has been shrinking headcount in recent years, and the number of GEICO employees for 2024 was 33 percent lower than its high point of 42,156, recorded five years ago in 2020.

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