River Parishes gain jobs

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Sep 27, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Were there any doubts about the need for a comprehensive labor study of the River Parishes, a recently completed analysis by Wadley-Donovan Growth Tech likely erases them.

Six years since the last major study and three years after Hurricane Katrina spurred population changes and multibillion-dollar industrial investments, here are some of Wadley-Donovan’s findings for its clients — the Port of South Louisiana and St. James, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes:

• Since 2000, the region’s current population of 128,500 has grown 14 percent, twice the national average.
• In the same time, the labor force has grown 9.3 percent in a region where employment is 58,000.
• About 11,000 people commute from the three parishes to other regions, but 21,000 people commute from the outside to work in the parishes.
• Increasingly, commuters are driving from East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Ascension and Lafourche parishes.
• Competitive salaries are drawing them. Average annual earnings of $45,100 in the River Parishes (based on 2005 data) are 44 percent higher than the state average and 17 percent higher than the U.S. average, according to Wadley-Donovan.

And though most of the 40 larger employers responding to the study’s survey foresee stable employment, Wadley-Donovan said actual hiring forecasts show the three River Parishes could gain 3,000 new jobs — a 5.2 percent gain — in just one year.

“You may be looking at in the next 12 to 24 months well over 1,000 new jobs that new industries will bring in — and that doesn’t even count existing industry,” said Linda Prudhomme, who leads economic development for the Port of South Louisiana. “There’s going to be a lot more than that. It’s all very good news, but we have to get ready for that. We have to get ready to continue to grow businesses in the area as well as retain those companies that are here.

“And we have to have the work force to do that.”

On the horizon is Nucor Corp.’s potential selection of a 4,000-acre St. James Parish site on the Mississippi River for a pig-iron manufacturing complex that over six years could expand to include a finished steel mill. It could eventually employ 1,250 and pay earnings of $75,000 a year.

By year’s end, Nucor should announce its decision to build in the River Parishes or overseas (Brazil is a possibility), but state economic development Secretary Stephen Moret and Gov. Bobby Jindal have said the decision will be late, likely in December.

Wadley-Donovan’s study concludes that the three-parish region can support one new large office employer with 1,173 qualified and screened workers in the first year of operation and one new large manufacturer with up to 1,161 qualified and screened workers.

That would satisfy Nucor’s needs, since the company initially would hire about 500.

A pair of expansions by Marathon Oil Corp. in Garyville and Valero Energy Corp. in Norco approach $5 billion in combined construction value and are employing thousands in the construction field. Often, those workers remain in the area to take permanent jobs with high pay in the industrial sector, Prudhomme said.

But the parishes face challenges.

Labor is the No. 1 factor behind where companies choose to locate projects, according to Wadley-Donovan, and 13 percent of the local work force, about 7,400 people, are either eligible to retire or will be eligible in the next five years.

St. Charles-based Workforce Alliance, a staffing firm, consulted with Wadley-Donovan in the study that identified 40 percent of those potential retirees as people who would continue working in the same profession after retirement. The remainder would not work or would work different, mostly part-time jobs.

In addition, the region’s labor market is very tight, Wadley-Donovan said, with 64 percent of occupations in the region showing signs of limited or unavailable talent.