While Louisiana has had its rough patches economically, there seems to be an upswing underway. Louisiana set a record for staying above the two million job mark for seven straight months. Adam Knapp, CEO of Leaders for a Better Louisiana, says there are encouraging signs that this type of job growth and stability can be a long-term trend.
“There was a pretty sizable increase last year in the total amount of projects coming into Louisiana or existing companies that feel like this is the right time to be expanding,” he says. “It’s across a wide variety of sectors. You see data centers in north and south Louisiana, big LMG projects announcing in the Lake Charles area, drone manufacturing moving into Lafayette, a big bioengineering project in Alexandria … it’s just really fascinating how spread across the state it is right now,” Knapp went on to explain.
“The Louisiana that we have grown up in and known for years has always been smaller than it is today in terms of jobs. We should now be talking about Louisiana as a place with more than two million jobs. That may not mean a whole lot to some folks, but it’s been a mark that Louisiana has not been able to hit and hang on to ever before,” Knapp illustrated. It’s an interesting demarcation point that points to a bright future in the region.
Knapp also believes tax code changes have drawn new workers to the state and kept them living here. “We actually did a study last year to see if, in changing the tax code, did it change the fairness across all household income groups. Largely what the changes they’ve made have done is keep it fairly balanced, but they redistributed where the taxation occurs. It looks like that more or less helped the state compete without necessarily putting the burden on any specific household income group. That’s what you hope to see in tax changes,” Knapp added.