Selling life insurance the latest hot job?

According to the Wall Street Journal, selling life insurance is a career returning to popularity.  A major factor is the vast layoffs in other financial services sectors.  Also, the resurgance in whole life policies creates a need for sales staff:

One factor turning this around is the way insurers' core product, whole life, came through the financial crisis. Competing term insurance, priced much lower, was sold on the pitch "Buy term and invest the difference." But when stocks plunged early on in the financial crisis, "invest the difference" sometimes meant "lose the difference." By contrast, money paid for whole life was still there.

Term-life sales were flat in the second half of 2009, according to Limra, while sales of whole-life policies were up 12% from a year earlier.

Whole life, given its complexity, generally isn't sold via the Internet, but needs an agent to explain it. So now the insurers that specialize in whole life are capitalizing on the more positive light in which it is viewed, adding agents.