The number of jobs lost in Louisiana amid the coronavirus pandemic is now nearly double what occurred when Hurricane Katrina devastated the state 15 years ago.
Louisiana’s job loss was at 11 percent in the first half of the year as coronavirus started ravaging the United States.
In comparison, the rate was six percent in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. Quarterly jobs losses for Louisiana during the entire 2008 Great Recession were less than four percent.
An economic forecast by Gary Wagner, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, predicts that it could take until 2022 for the state’s economy to fully recovery from COVID-19.
Louisiana’s job loss was at 11 percent in the first half of the year. Wagner expects year-over-year job growth to remain negative until the first quarter of next year
Wagner, who released his forecasts quarterly, noted that the state lost 218,000 payroll jobs in the first half of the year and the official unemployment rate was at 13 percent by the end of the second quarter – a high not seen since 1986.
More than 800,000 people had also lodged new unemployment claims since March 14, which in excess of the state’s historical average.
He expects year-over-year job growth to remain negative until the first quarter of next year.
‘Under the baseline scenario, the state is expected to have 1.9 million jobs at the end of 2021, or about 84,000 fewer jobs than in 2019,’ he said.
The state’s economy contracted at an annual rate of 6.6 percent in the first quarter, Wagner wrote in his report.
Despite the heavy job loss and shrinking economy, Wagner predicts Louisiana’s economy will bounce back quicker than initially expected
‘Louisiana’s contraction of 6.6 percent was one of the sharpest drops in the nation,’ he said.
‘Only Michigan, New York, Nevada and Hawaii experienced larger downturns in economic activity.’
Wagner, however, predicts Louisiana’s economy will bounce back quicker than initially expected.
‘As bad as some of the numbers we had between the first and second quarters, turns out that a lot of those indicators were a little better than what I was projecting back in May,’ he said.
‘I think one of the reasons was the additional unemployment benefits. That really helped to boost consumer spending.
‘At the time of the previous report, there was some uncertainty about how long that would last. We now know it’s going to continue to the end of 2020.’