Louisiana has likely clawed its way out of an 18-month employment recession, but hasn’t yet tilted toward growth, the state’s chief economist tells the USA Today Network of Louisiana.
“If we’re not out of the recession, we’re close, but there aren’t any signs yet of sustained growth,” Greg Albrecht says.
U.S. Labor Department statistics show Louisiana had three straight months without job losses, beginning in February and ending with the latest revised figures in April. That comes after 18 straight months of year-over-year job hemorrhaging as employment was growing in most of the nation.
“We’re bouncing around zero, which means total employment is no longer falling, but it’s still flat,” Albrecht says.
Albrecht first identified Louisiana’s employment recession during a February 2016 Revenue Estimating Conference meeting, setting off alarms and grabbing headlines. Louisiana’s jobs trough, as Albrecht calls it, bottomed out in August 2016 when the state had shed a total of 40,000 jobs from its peak.
“That was the worst it got,” he says.
The state reached peak employment in December 2014, when more than two million Louisianans were working. Revised April employment numbers show that while the state has stemmed losses, it remains about 28,000 jobs behind the 2014 peak.
“We’ve ceased the decline,” Albrecht says, “but we’re not at an expansion.”
