Louisiana Tops 2 Million Jobs for First Time Ever

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The number of non-farm jobs in Louisiana has topped 2.01 million for the first time in state history. That’s according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Adam Knapp, the CEO of Leaders for a Better Louisiana, says it’s a major milestone, driven largely by growth in the construction industry.

“Obviously the big Meta data center project that’s up near Monroe, big LNG projects that are under construction; multiple ones over in the Lake Charles region, and a huge industrial expansion happening in the capital region,” Knapp said.

Knapp says Monroe posted the fastest job growth of any metro area, fueled by construction of Meta’s $50 billion data center in Richland Parish. He says six of the state’s ten metro areas added jobs, while Houma and Shreveport are among the four that lost jobs.

“Generally, I think overall, we’re still seeing expansion everywhere. They’ve had pretty big economic development projects also in Houma and Shreveport, so we expect to see upticks in those regions over the coming year,” Knapp noted.

While the construction boom has boosted employment, Knapp says he’s concerned Louisiana ranks among the lowest in the South for new business applications since 2019.

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Knapp says the construction jobs are temporary. He says if new firms do not form behind the megaprojects, the boom risks leaving little residue.

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BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's job market has hit a record high, with payrolls topping two million employees for the first time, according to Leaders for a Better Louisiana.

The organization says the state added 16,700 jobs over the past year, ranking fourth in the South, with much of the growth coming from construction.

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The growing industry follows a surge of large industrial projects coming to Louisiana, including the Richland Parish Meta data center and the Ascension Parish Hyundai steel mill.

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The report also shows that weekly unemployment claims fell by 32 percent over the past year.

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Gov. Jeff Landry announced on Monday a major data center expansion in Richland Parish that he said positions Louisiana to lean into the “next industrial revolution.”

“The next generation of economic growth will not simply be measured in barrels of oil or tons of steel,” Landry said at the Baton Rouge announcement of the expansion of the Meta data center in rural, northeast Louisiana. “It will be measured in electrical generation, megawatts, computing power, energy capacity, and the ability to build the infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is increasing its investment into the massive facility from the estimated $28 billion to $50 billion, according to the announcement made Monday by Landry and the company’s executives. The facility will be one of the largest data centers in the world, Landry said.

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“Without Gov. Landry, this investment would not have been possible,” said Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration official who became president and vice chairman of Meta at the beginning of the year.

“Louisiana is the envy of every state,” she added. “Richland Parish is an awfully special place here in Louisiana, and it is becoming a role model for the country.”

The Meta project is one of several data centers in the works for Louisiana. Other high-profile sites include a set of three data centers in the Shreveport area for Amazon and one in West Feliciana Parish under development from a company called Hut 8 known for bitcoin mining.

The facilities are mostly going to areas of Louisiana that have often felt left out of economic booms.

“I told people from North Louisiana that we were going to bring economic development in,” said Landry, recalling his days campaigning for office in 2024. “They really just thought I was another one of the politicians running for governor that was lying.”

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