Editor’s note: Stephen Moret is wrapping up his last week as secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, a position he’s held since 2008. In an exclusive, three-column series for Daily Report, Moret reflects on his tenure at LED (Part 1); makes the case for robust, diversified economic growth to be Louisiana’s top goal (Part 2); and offers a roadmap for how to accomplish that goal (Part 3).
For more than seven years, I have had the special privilege of serving our state as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development. During that time, our team at LED has been focused on a single goal—positioning Louisiana for a brighter economic future.
Since 2008, we have faced some big, mostly unanticipated challenges, including the Great Recession, the decline of the post-Katrina economic recovery bubble, hurricanes, the BP oil spill, and a large drop in oil prices. Despite those challenges, we have made meaningful progress in economic development.
We have worked to transform LED into a fast, creative, and solution-oriented partner for corporate executives and site-selection consultants, as well as a champion for existing Louisiana employers.
Since 2008, LED has worked collaboratively with local and regional partners to secure economic development projects that are yielding more than 91,000 new direct and indirect jobs, $62 billion in capital investment, and billions of dollars in new sales for small businesses statewide.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Louisiana’s private-sector employment growth since January 2008 ranks second best in the South and seventh best in the U.S. In that time period, BLS data indicate that Louisiana has added more private-sector jobs than Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, combined.
One of our early actions at LED was creating our state’s first dedicated business expansion and retention group, which focuses exclusively on supporting the health, competitiveness, retention, and growth of Louisiana’s existing companies. Proactively meeting with hundreds of companies every year, this team has helped secure more than 175 expansion projects since 2008, such as those with Cheniere, Crest Industries, Folgers, Gardner Denver, Hayes Manufacturing, P&G, Metal Shark Boats, and TCI.
While LED has successfully competed for a wide variety of manufacturing projects that are helping spur the biggest manufacturing investment boom in Louisiana history, our most notable work has been successful efforts to diversify Louisiana’s economy.
For example, LED has secured major aerospace industry projects, such as the new Bell Helicopter Jet Ranger X manufacturing facility in Lafayette and the AAR aircraft MRO project in Lake Charles. LED also has secured a wide array of agribusiness and bio-energy projects, such as ConAgra Foods and Drax Biomass.
The software development industry, a top LED target, has become the fastest-growing industry sector in Louisiana. Leading technology companies have announced major job-creating projects in Louisiana, such as CGI in Lafayette, CenturyLink in Monroe, CSC in Bossier, EA in Baton Rouge, GE Capital in New Orleans, IBM in Baton Rouge and Monroe, and others that collectively are creating more than 4,500 new, direct tech jobs in our state. In our entire state’s history, there has never been a better time than today for our college graduates to secure technology jobs right here at home.
Many of the most significant wins were enabled by innovative public/private partnerships we developed with higher education institutions, including Louisiana Tech, LSU, UL-Lafayette, and UNO, which are dramatically expanding their computer science programs to prepare their students for thousands of new tech jobs in Louisiana. In 2008, we collaborated with the Louisiana Community and Technical College System to create LED FastStart, a unique, customized workforce training program that Business Facilities magazine has ranked as the top state workforce training program in the country for the last five years in a row. The program has received favorable recognition from The Economist, Forbes and other prominent publications.
We also have cultivated more foreign direct investment (FDI) in Louisiana. We shepherded the creation of the first Louisiana Office of International Commerce within LED, as well as created our state’s first master plan for international commerce. Since 2008, we have led business development missions to China, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom, which resulted in new FDI leads and raised awareness of Louisiana as an attractive investment location. In that timeframe, LED has secured a wide variety of FDI project wins, such as Benteler Steel/Tube, CGI, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Methanex, Sasol, Shintech, SNF, Yuhuang Chemical, and Zagis. More are on the way.
LED made programmatic changes, executed targeted marketing strategies, and cultivated site-selection consultants and media organizations to improve Louisiana’s national business image. Louisiana now ranks higher in every national business climate ranking than it ever did prior to January 2008. Prior to 2008, Louisiana never ranked among the top 10 states in any national business climate ranking. Today, Louisiana ranks among the top 10 states in most of them.
In recent years, LED repeatedly has been recognized as one of the top-performing state economic development agencies in the United States. Site Selection has named LED among the top five state economic development agencies several times since 2008 (including a No. 1 ranking in 2011), and Pollina Corporate Real Estate named LED as tied for the best-performing state economic development agency in 2013.
Many people contributed to these encouraging outcomes. Indeed, economic development is a team sport. I am deeply grateful to Gov. Bobby Jindal for making economic development his top priority. I’m also grateful for the support of the Legislature, our congressional delegation, my fellow cabinet members (nearly all of whom have provided critical support to LED’s efforts), the business community, many higher education leaders, our ports and airports, and many committed local government leaders, as well as the great work of so many local and regional economic development professionals over the last seven years. I’m especially grateful for the wonderful team of smart, energetic and dedicated professionals who work at LED, as their efforts have produced substantial results for the people of Louisiana.
I am proud and encouraged by the progress Louisiana recently has made in economic development, yet I’m most excited about what is possible for the future of our state.
Much attention appropriately is being focused on our state’s current fiscal challenges, which primarily are the result of structural problems with our state tax system as well as a sharp drop in oil prices. Once this important issue has been addressed, we need to recognize that our state’s economic future is not yet secure enough that we can think of it as on cruise control.
While our state’s business image has dramatically improved and we have secured many exciting economic development projects over the last seven years, we’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible. Now is the time to keep the momentum going. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to grow Louisiana’s economy, cultivating more job opportunities for people across our state.
In my next column, I will make the case for robust, diversified job growth to remain our state’s top priority for many years to come, and I will detail what that would mean for our state.
