Are jobs cuts in real estate finally slowing?

Here's a good-news-bad-news report about jobs in industries like mortgage lending, real estate, and construction.

About 6,500 people across the nation lost jobs with mortgage lenders in October. That's bad enough, but not when you compare it to the more than 50,000 mortgage workers who lost jobs in August and September.

It was a similar story in housing, which includes real estate agents and construction workers. About 12,000 people lost jobs in October, far below the nearly 57,000 who dropped from those industries the two months before that.

The figures come from the Chicago outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

"It may be too soon to declare an end to the crisis in housing and the credit markets, but this is definitely a very positive report," said John A. Challenger, chief executive of the company.

Many of those jobs cuts are happening in Florida, which shares top honors with housing-stressed states like California and Nevada.