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A relative boom in Baton Rouge
“No place has been untouched by this recession. This is a change from previous recessions,” said Alan Berube, a senior fellow and research director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. “But there’s a big difference in losing one-tenth of a percentage and losing 15% of jobs.”
Baton Rouge, which was ranked No. 6, “grew jobs every month until August 2009 and in August it only lost nine-tenths of a percent, compared to 5.1% nationally,” said Lauren C. Scott, professor emeritus of economics at Louisiana State University.
Scott said $5.1 billion of construction projects have been announced or are under construction in the Baton Rouge metro, including a new plant for French chemical company SNF and the expansion of an ExxonMobil (XOM) chemical plant.
“One nice thing after another thing happened that has countered what’s happening in the rest of the country,” Scott said.
Ernie Goss, an economist at Creighton University in Omaha, who studies much of the nation’s energy and farm belts, said the strong dollar early this year hurt farm exports. “But the dollar has now weakened significantly and that will be good for the farm sector and energy commodities,” Goss said. “I think 2010 is going to be much better than 2009. But we are still not going to have a lot of job gains.
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