More jobs and fewer unemployed. That’s the results of the most recent labor data released Tuesday by the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
Louisiana’s unadjusted unemployment rate dropped to 7.3 percent for August — 0.3 percentage points lower than August last year. The state’s jobless rate also experienced a positive, though minor, shift from July to August, decreasing 0.6 percent points.
Yet, the number of Louisianans with jobs (1.9 million) dropped by almost 14,000 between July and August. That dip, however, is still an increase in the number of employed residents when compared to August of last year.
In the metropolitan statistical area of Lafayette, which includes St. Martin Parish, the unemployment rate decreased 0.5 percentage points from July’s rate to a 5 percent rate of unemployment in August. The latest figures show that all eight metro areas in Louisiana experienced a decrease in the number of jobless residents.
“It’s encouraging that the improvements in employment are spread across the state,” Louisiana Workforce Commission Director Curt Eysink says in a press release announcing the latest figures.
In August, there were 141,605 employed and 7,397 unemployed workers in the Lafayette metropolitan area. Compared to the same month last year, the numbers represent a 0.9 percent decrease in the area’s unemployment rate.
Click here for a full-breakdown of the Workforce Commission’s August labor market breakdown.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Plains Exploration and Production, the Houston company Flores has been running since 2002, is building a deepwater Gulf of Mexico warehouse and storage facility on Bernard Road in Broussard.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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