State loses 8,000 jobs in April

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: May 28, 2009 - Page: 1B

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One month does not a trend make, but an April job report released Wednesday grabbed the attention of state work-force leaders. From March to April, Louisiana shed 8,000 jobs, New Orleans lost 2,400 jobs and Baton Rouge fell by 2,100 positions.

Only Alexandria (600) and Shreveport (200) added jobs in April.

“We’re more focused on trends than we are on any single month, and Louisiana continues to do better than the nation as a whole, as it has for well over a year,” Tim Barfield, executive director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, said in a statement. “However, the longer the nation’s economy struggles, the more drag it will have on our economy and labor market, and it’s clear that we’re not immune.”

What also hasn’t set in is an annual trend of job decline.

Though Louisiana’s employment of 1.937 million is down 6,700 jobs from a year ago, the Baton Rouge metro area showed an 800-job annual gain to 375,700 jobs.

Houma is up 1,400 jobs from April 2008, to 98,200, while all six of Louisiana’s other metro areas were either down for the year or unchanged, with the most notable change being a 3,200-job annual loss in New Orleans. In Lafayette, April employment of 150,900 was down 200 jobs on the month and 1,400 jobs on the year.

“Baton Rouge and New Orleans — our two largest metro areas — followed the statewide job trends in April,” said Patty Granier, who manages labor market information for the Workforce Commission. “We really need more than one preliminary month to see if this is a trend — or if it’s just an April thing. The overall important thing is that we’re still doing a lot better than the nation.”

Louisiana’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 5.8 percent in March to 6.2 in April, when the U.S. jobless rate was 8.9 percent.

Preliminary data for Louisiana’s job market show the number of unemployed people grew from 115,900 in March to 116,300 in April in a work force of 2.064 million people. The state work force — about 10,600 people larger than March — reflects the number of people 16 or older who are working or looking for work based on a survey of residences.

An examination of a decade’s worth of job data shows the April downward trend is troubling. From 1998 through 2005, Baton Rouge added jobs from March to April — an average gain of 3,400 for eight straight years.

Baton Rouge’s monthly changes for April were a 400-job loss in 2006, followed by an 1,100-job gain in 2007 and a 2,800-job loss in 2008.

Though the Louisiana unemployment rate is up from 4.1 percent one year ago to 6.2 percent, the latest rate is the ninth-lowest in the U.S. and is tied with Oklahoma’s rate, Granier said. North Dakota’s 4.0 percent rate is lowest while the highest is industrially challenged Michigan, which has a 12.9 percent rate.

Baton Rouge showed a decline of 1,300 jobs for the year in its now 5,100-member information job sector, which includes telecommunications and film industry jobs, Granier said. The telecommunications sector has experienced layoffs and the film industry is volatile, depending on the number, size and length of movie projects, she said.