Those who still read the printed edition of the daily newspaper might have noticed an unusual ad in their recent Sunday edition. It was a postcard, actually, exhorting expats from the Bayou State to “Come Home, Louisiana.”
The postcards are kitschy and colorful, with big bubble letters on the front saying, “Wish you lived here.” A fill-in-the-blank form on the back is designed for locals to complete and send to far-flung relatives and friends, who may not realize Louisiana has a booming economy and—for the first time in decades—an abundance of jobs.
Pause and think about that for a minute. Louisiana has an abundance of jobs. Good jobs. More jobs than it can fill. That’s a problem the state hasn’t had in a long time—perhaps ever. It’s still a problem, though.
Which is where the postcards come in. They are but one element of a nationwide, multimedia campaign sponsored by Louisiana Economic Development, which is trying to encourage former Louisiana residents to explore the new employment opportunities here and, it is hoped, return home to take advantage of them.
The campaign is directly tied to LED’s new free website—LouisianaJobConnection.com—which matches the skills of job seekers with the best available Louisiana jobs. Already, thousands of jobs are available on the site. Thousands more will be posted in the coming months. The state has never done anything like this before, so there’s no way to know how successful it will be, but LED Secretary Stephen Moret is optimistic.
“We’ve never before had such a simple, powerful platform available to job seekers to search for professional and technical job matches,” he says.
If it all sounds a bit gimmicky, it is. But it’s not a bad idea, and it’s critically important the state get the word out that it needs qualified professionals and trained workers in a variety of fields, particularly engineering and computer science. If we don’t have enough workers to fill those tens of thousands of jobs, companies will stop investing and expanding here and the economic boom will stall out.
How did we become a state with more good jobs than we can fill?
The explanation for the good jobs has to do in part with the low natural gas prices that are fueling the expansions and new industrial construction projects in the petrochemical sector.
It’s also the result of Moret’s and LED’s efforts over the past six years to develop new industry sectors, particularly in the areas of technology and digital arts. Their hard work is paying off.
The fact that we have too few qualified people to fill those jobs has to do with the state’s net migration problem. In every decade since the 1980s, Louisiana has lost more people than it has gained—more than 600,000 between 1980 and 2010.
Though there is data to suggest that trend may have started to reverse itself over the last couple of years, we’ve still lost a lot of people. Now, it is hoped, some of those expats will feel confident enough about the state’s economy and ability to provide a decent, affordable quality of life they will want to come back.
The LED campaign targets all former Louisianans but concentrates specifically on those who have skills and/or formal education in the high-demand areas of engineering, computer science, accounting, finance, manufacturing operations and craft trades. Though other job types are included on the job connection website—marketing and public relations positions, for instance—they aren’t the focus of the campaign.
The whole undertaking isn’t cheap but it’s relatively inexpensive, given what’s really at stake. LED is spending a total of $2.4 million on the job connection program, most of which will be dedicated to online and social media promotions.
Just a small portion so far has gone to the postcard campaign, but more may be allocated, depending on how successful it is. If the campaign drives substantial volume, Moret says LED will continue it into 2015.
And you can bet he’s paying close attention to the metrics: namely, how many former and, even, current residents sign up on the job connection website and how many matches are made. Already, more than 15,000 job seekers have registered online, and the campaign has only just begun.
Louisiana still has many systemic problems and social ills. This campaign is not to suggest those challenges have been solved. But all states have problems. It’s refreshing, for a change, that Louisiana has a legitimate reason to encourage its former residents to come home.
Here’s hoping at least some of them do.
