La. economic forecast shows employment rising over the next two years

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By Charles Nunmaker

With recession being one of the only things that can be heard on the news every day, many people have started to lose faith in their local economies. But, it now seems like the country is starting to climb out of the recession, and people can start regaining trust in their state's economy.

A new economic forecast just released seems to confirm just that. The forecast, as released by LSU's Professor Emeritus of Economics Loren Scott, states that Louisiana will add jobs over the next two years at a growth rate of 0.9 percent a year.

A 0.9 percent growth equates to 17,800 non-farm jobs that will be added in 2010, and an additional 18,000 jobs will be added in 2011 to Louisiana's local economies. That's a total of 35,800 new jobs in Louisiana over the next two years.

"We, as a state as a whole, are fanning jobs at about a 0.9 percent growth rate [per year] in 2010 and 2011,"said Professor Scott. "Normally coming out of a recovery, we would be going much faster than that, probably at least twice as fast as that, but we're not doing that right now."

There are two problems on the horizon though for Louisiana's economy. These problems are the two proposed legislations: a federal tax on petroleum production and the cap-and-trades bill that has passed the House and would control carbon emissions.

"These two pieces of legislation are going to hit Louisiana particularly hard because we are the number two producer of natural gasses and the number one producer of crude oil in the United States," said Scott. "And then we're the number two state in the nation in terms of refining capacity, and the number three state in the nation in terms of chemical production."

Scott added, "We're just going to get hammered by these specific pieces of legislation and it's going to hurt. When we did our forecast, we took into account these two pieces of legislation, and so we have already taken that into account."

Despite possible budget issues and the two mentioned legislations, the economic forecast for the employment growth of Louisiana's cities looks to be excellent.

The forecast shows that Monroe, after having several years of a waning economy, will grow the fastest on the employment percentage basis due to the planned growth of the V-Vehicle Co. assembly plant, the Foster Farms chicken plant and a Congra sweet potato farm.

It also shows that Baton Rouge will add the largest number of jobs over the next two years with 4,000 new jobs in 2010 and 5,500 new jobs in 2011. These numbers are stimulated by the $5.1 billion that will be spent on new construction projects and industrial growth in the region.

New Orleans is shown on the forecast to have the slowest job growth rate over the next two years due to its lack of incoming businesses and investments, among other factors including levee security and lack of housing.

Originally Published: Issue 821 - October 28, 2009

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