Louisiana has more people working than ever, but thousands of jobs are vacant. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June was a record low 3.8 percent and the number of employed, which was just over two-million, also set an all-time record. Louisiana Workforce Commission Secretary Ava Cates says the state’s workforce continues to grow.
“We’ve not been that close with these numbers since 2006, which was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, so this good news,” said Cates.
Cates says the manufacturing sector is hiring as they’ve added nearly seven thousand jobs over the last year.
“Which is really excited, because those are higher paying jobs, similarly education and health care continue to be strong,” said Cates.
Cates says they are also no longer seeing a big decline in mining and logging jobs, which includes the oil and gas industry. But while the number employed has set an all-time record, Cates says the state still has over 25,000 jobs available at www.louisianaworks.net/hire.
“There are more jobs out there, we are doing tons of training initiatives, we’ve had a big push on apprenticeship which is earn while you learn, we know that we have all of those infrastructure jobs coming down as well,” said Cates.
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