La. feeling little pain from the recession
While the national recession has hit southern states such as Florida and Georgia hard, Louisiana has felt little pain. "Louisiana was one of the last states to see the impact of the national recession," Mike Chriszt, assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, told The Times-Picayune. Even though the state was late in entering the recession, that doesn't mean the economic bad times will stay around longer than in other states. Chriszt says that labor markets across the U.S. should stabilize this year and that there's no reason for job losses to continue in Louisiana when the recovery is happening elsewhere. But one important Louisiana industry could still feel an economic sting in 2010: tourism. Consumers still don't feel confident about spending money. "There's reason to think that 2010 will remain a pretty tough year as far as tourism is concerned," says Chriszt.
 
Initial La. jobless claims drop 23%
First-time jobless claims for January 2010 dropped 23% in Louisiana. The Louisiana Workforce Commission says that for the week ending Saturday, January 30, there were 3,816 initial claims for jobless benefits from the newly unemployed. That's down from 4,945 for the week ending Jan. 16. The latest count also is below the 4,719 first-time claims for the comparable week ending Jan. 24, 2009. There was a slight decrease in the number of people continuing to get unemployment-a sign of those still looking for work. The state paid out 65,504 weeks of additional benefits for the week ending Jan. 23, compared with 66,735 the previous week.
 
La. tied for third in job creation
Louisiana is tied for third in a ranking of how states and the District of Columbia fared in job creation in 2009. Louisiana is tied with West Virginia for the third spot in the Gallup Job Creation Index, which is based on 100,000 daily tracking interviews with Americans over the course of last year. The people polled were asked if their company was increasing the size of its workforce, holding employment steady or laying off staff. While all states saw their job outlook darken in 2009, energy-producing states such as Louisiana, West Virginia and North Dakota (ranked first) held up the best. Nebraska, which has benefited from a strong commodities market and increasing demand for ethanol, occupies the second slot. Michigan and Nevada, two states hit hardest by the recession and the real estate slide, rank last in the job creation index. 

Source: Baton Rouge Business Report Daily Report