Tuesday, May 4
May 4, 2010Thursday, May 6
May 6, 2010If unemployment were a baseball game, Louisiana would have some of the league’s best hitters. While the issue is far from trivial, the area has continued its trend of low unemployment, falling behind only a handful of other states.
“I think we’re starting to see the resurgence of projects that had really been put off for the past 18 months,” explained Terrebonne Economic Development Authority CEO Mike Ferdinand.
For the month of March, every parish and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) experienced declining unemployment, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission, or LWC. Statewide not seasonally adjusted numbers fell from 6.7 percent in February to 6.2 percent.
Jobless rates fell in similar fashion in February, as New Orleans was found on the upswing, harnessing the lowest unemployment rate among the nation’s largest MSAs.
During that time, New Orleans’ jobless rate also fell from 6.5 percent to 6.0 and it gained 2,500 non-farm jobs.
From February to March, more than 6,500 non-farm jobs were logged, with the leisure and hospitality industry fueling much of the gain, said officials in a news release. The wave of census workers also sent numbers soaring, putting more than 2,000 federal government jobs on the books in March.
Locally, officials from TEDA have been dealing with an influx of patrons wanting to do business in the area, said Ferdinand. Everything from legacy businesses like oil and gas, to smaller, less conspicuous setups have rolled in over the last few months, or at least expressed interest in the region, he explained.
Nationwide, the national unemployment rate hovered above 10 percent, a sharp 1 percent increase from revised figures taken in 2009.
Things are looking even better for Louisiana, with Houma topping 372 MSAs in March to capture the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. Numbers released by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics last Wednesday also showed that all eight MSAs in Louisiana had rates ranking among 40 lowest in the country.
The Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux hosted a jobless rate of only 4.6 percent.
“This is a very clear sign that our state is moving in the right direction,” said Executive Director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission Curt Eysink in a news release. “As a state, our labor markets have been outperforming the nation and the South consistently and these numbers show how our metro areas, where the vast majority of our population lives and works, are contributing and benefiting.”
Lafourche, which is included in the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux MSA, saw unemployment rates dropping to 4.4 percent last month.
St. Mary, a non-MSA parish, had rates at more than 8 percent.
However, the latest hit to the economy could come from the Gulf of Mexico, where the Deepwater Horizon rig recently exploded and continues to leak thousands of gallons of oil into surrounding waters.
Although the implications are hard to determine, it could send the local economy sinking, Tri-parish officials fear.
