Positive trends: FBI crime data released today that shows violent crime in Louisiana has decreased, with fewer murders in 2018. Louisiana’s murder rate decreased by 7.8%, overall violent crime decreased by 3.4 percentage points. Louisiana’s murder rate was 11.4 per 100,000 people, which is a decline from 12.3 since the 2017 data. Property crimes also went down by 2.7% from 2017 to 2018. See the FBI data here.
Student gains: Southern University released its fall 2019 preliminary enrollment report, showing the school has 7,031 students enrolled this semester, a 5.1% increase in enrollment over the 6,693 students enrolled a year ago. Since the fall 2016 semester, Southern has grown its enrollment by 10.6%.
Ranking: The U.S. Conference of Mayors released its 18th annual report and forecast on U.S. Metro Economies today. Baton Rouge ranks 59th among the nation’s top 381 metro economies. Its economy is larger than the countries of Sudan, Macau and Slovenia and the states of North Dakota and Alaska, and the region represents more than 20% of Louisiana’s Gross State Product. See the full report here.
