Some job recovery in Louisiana in January, despite end of seasonal work

Louisiana job outlook improves somewhat in January

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana’s job picture improved somewhat in January, despite the loss of retail jobs for the Christmas season and jobs temporarily held by students, the Louisiana Workforce Commission reported Friday.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, non-farm employment fell by 21,900 in January, but with typical seasonal factors taken out, Louisiana gained 2,800 jobs over the month, spread across most economic sectors, the Workforce Commission said.

At the same time, on a non-seasonal basis, the state’s non-farm jobs count fell by 42,200 between January 2009 and January 2010. From December 2008 through December 2009, the number of lost jobs totaled 47,100.

In the latest January-to-January tally, Louisiana is down 29,400 jobs in petroleum, manufacturing and construction and 12,800 in the service-providing sector.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for January was 7.4 percent, up from 7.3 percent in December. During the month, state officials said the number of people working or looking for work increased by just over 6,000 — typically a sign that recession-discouraged workers have started looking again for employment.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of people employed rose by 3,564 in January, while the number of unemployed increased by 2,493.

The regional unemployment rate for the South was 9.7 percent in January, while the national rate was 10 percent.

Workforce Commission head Curt Eysink said the numbers followed typical January patterns and were encouraging. “The number of people in the labor force increased, the unemployment rate held steady,” he said.

Without seasonal factors, education-health services has been one of the few gainers in the economy with an addition of 12,400 jobs from January 2009 through January 2010. Mining and logging, which includes petroleum, has lost 7,500 jobs, construction is down 8,500 jobs and manufacturing has shed 13,400 jobs.

In the service-providing sector, trade-transportation-utilities has lost 13,500 jobs, professional business services are down 6,900 jobs over the year and the financial sector has dropped 4,l00 jobs. State government has lost 2,400 jobs, while local government employment has increased by 2,000 jobs. Federal government employment is unchanged.

In January, there were 16,694 new and renewed claims for jobless benefits, a drop from December’s 20,169 and lower than January 2009’s count of 18,885. Last month, 5,985 recipients exhausted their benefits, compared with 5,529 in December and 2,516 in January 2009.