The severe floods that hit Louisiana last month added to the economic pain of southern cities already struggling with job losses amid a slowdown in the energy sector.
The Lafayette and Houma-Thibodaux metro areas of the Pelican State saw some of the sharpest job losses nationwide in August, according to Labor Department data released Wednesday. Employment in Lafayette was down by 3,300, or 4.1%, from a year earlier and 3,300, or 3.4%, in Houma-Thibodaux.
Those cities have been shedding jobs for months alongside a falloff in energy-sector activity in the Gulf of Mexico. They have seen nonfarm payrolls fall from a year earlier every month since January 2015.
Lafayette was hit hard by the floods while the parishes surrounding Houma largely escaped. But heavy rains and related damage wiped out some crops in the state and could ripple through other sectors of the region’s economy. Insurer Aon Benfield forecast total economic losses related to the flooding at $10 billion to $15 billion.
Baton Rouge, La., another city hit hard by the flooding, added jobs compared with a year earlier.
Elsewhere in the U.S., employment rose and the unemployment rate fell in most metropolitan areas in August, a sign of steady if uneven economic progress across the country.
Unemployment rates were lower than a year earlier in close to two-thirds of the nation’s 387 metropolitan areas. It rose in 123 metros, and was unchanged in 22.
More than 80% of cities added jobs over the year.
There were few overarching themes in the latest snapshot of cities and their suburbs. Big metros like New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., added the most jobs. As a percentage of the workforce, smaller locales such as St. George, Utah, and Madera, Calif., saw particularly strong growth.
The unemployment rate was lowest in Sioux Falls, S.D., Fargo and Bismarck, N.D., and Portsmouth, N.H. The national unemployment rate in August was 5.0%. The figures aren’t seasonally adjusted.
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from Real Time Economics http://ift.tt/2drBjNt
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