Lake Charles is one of three metropolitan areas in Louisiana that seems to be going against the national grain when it comes to new job offerings.

Whether this is the early stages of our boom or not, the news is good locally on the unemployment front.

Six of Louisiana’s nine metropolitan areas lost nonfarm jobs over the past year. Lake Charles, Baton Rouge and Hammond did not.

Leisure and hospitality job gains in Lake Charles — as well as a big boost in construction jobs — helped push the metropolitan area’s nonfarm employment total to 102,800. That’s a gain of 5,800 over last year.

During that time, Lake Charles welcomed Golden Nugget casino resort and several new retail shops and restaurants.

With the expected $67 billion in industrial expansion coming in the next few years, Lake Charles can only continue to help the state.

As far as Louisiana’s overall numbers this go round, though, the job market did suffer some setbacks. Four of 11 job sectors lost workers, according to he Louisiana Workforce Commission. Government jobs decreased by 5,900, and another 5,900 jobs disappeared from the mining and logging industries.

The other sectors experiencing job losses were construction, which finished at 137,100, a decrease of 2,300 employees, and information jobs, which declined by 300 and totaled 27,500.

A separate report Monday showed that first-time claims for unemployment benefits in Louisiana for the week ending June 27 decreased from the previous week’s total.

Continued unemployment claims claimed for the week ending June 27 decreased to 26,298 compared to 26,412 the previous week. The state labor department figures show the initial claims decreased to 2,888 from the previous week’s total of 3,368. For the comparable week a year earlier, there were 2,691.

(MGNonline)

Mike Groll