Governor John Bel Edwards during his End of Year press briefing. December 19, 2022. Photo by Brooke Thorington
At his end-of-the-year press conference, Governor John Bel Edwards highlighted the state’s finances which have drastically improved from when he took office seven years ago, and because of that, the state is able to increase funding to programs versus cutting them.
“This year we passed a budget that makes historic investments in education at every level, an unprecedented amount of funding for our infrastructure to include broadband, just to name a few things,” said Edwards.
Edwards says when he took office the state had a $2-billon deficit and with surplus amounts, in his two terms it’s now $2 billion to the good.
Last week the Revenue Estimating Conference says the state has an extra $925 million for the current budget year and for the next fiscal year estimated $608 million.
In addition to finances, Edwards says the state’s unemployment rate remains at historic lows at 2.9%.
“That’s quite impressive as it is, but I think it’s even more impressive when you think where we were two years ago,” said Edwards.
In December 2020, the unemployment rate was 6.9%. Employment wise the governor says the state is in much better shape than it was two years ago.
“Every job lost during the pandemic has been recaptured and then some. We’ve added 228,000 and we have more Louisianans working today than we ever have before at more than 2,048,000,” said Edwards.
Comments