Shirley Prejean
March 12, 2007Clyde Dennis
March 14, 2007Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes tied with Lafayette, producing the state’s lowest unemployment rate at 2.9 percent in January.
The news for Houma was equally as good. The jobless rate rose slightly to 2.9 percent, up from 2.4 percent in December 2006. With a 3.0 percent unemployment rate, Lafayette placed second among metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), according to figured released by the state Department of Labor Friday.
Louisiana lost 17,300 non-farm jobs in January, though many of the losses were part of a cyclical shift after the holidays, the state DOL reported.
The job losses came mainly in retail trade and state government, sectors that typically rebound in the spring, after colleges and university workers return and shopping picks up again, said Mark Jones, the agency’s labor market specialist. The state unemployment rate increased from 3.6 percent to 4.4 percent, corresponding to national figures.
The state still has about 25,000 fewer nonfarm jobs, not seasonally adjusted, than it had in January 2005, before hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
That figure is a revision of earlier estimates that painted a far gloomier jobs picture of post-storm Louisiana. The new figures indicate previous estimates were off by about 80,000 jobs, the agency said.
The worst post-storm jobs picture was in October 2005 n immediately after the two storms n and analysts had previously estimated that the state had a total of 1.725 million jobs at that point. In fact, revised estimates show the state had about 1.776 million jobs n 50,000 more than previously thought, Jones said.
The January figures showed an increase of 17,600 jobs over the previous month in the leisure industry that includes casinos, restaurants and hotels. Most of that gain, over 14,000 jobs, came in the New Orleans metropolitan area.
The construction industry, spurred by post-hurricane work, had 8,000 new jobs.
