BATON ROUGE – Per revisions from Bureau of Labor & Statistics (BLS) annual benchmarking procedure, Louisiana seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment added jobs in January 2019 for the eleventh straight month over-the-year.
Since January 2018, seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment increased by 10,200 jobs to 1,984,300. From December 2018, Louisiana added 2,100 jobs.
While the news was good for the state, the Shreveport Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) lost 1,600 jobs from January 2018 and 800 jobs from December 2018.
Not-seasonally adjusted January 2019 unemployment rate for the Shreveport MSA was 5.4 percent, up from 5.0 percent in January 2018 and up from 4.7 percent from December.
Benchmarking is BLS’s adjustment procedure to prior years’ data. This procedure which is undertaken by BLS every year, impacts every state when January data is published in March. During this procedure, survey data used to prepare monthly reports on nonfarm employment, the labor force and unemployment rates, is replaced by the actual employment data contained in the quarterly wage and tax reports filed by Louisiana employers. The two primary data sets used for benchmarking are the Current Employment Statistics (CES) and Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) programs.
Since January 2018, seasonally adjusted private sector employment increased by 9,500 jobs to 1,657,400 for January 2019. This is also the eleventh straight over-the-year increase. From December 2018, seasonally adjusted private sector employment increased by 2,500 jobs.
Industries that showed the largest gains for seasonally adjusted jobs:
• Leisure and Hospitality gained 3,600 jobs from January 2018 and 1,100 jobs from December 2018. The Leisure and Hospitality sector is at a series high for employment. The Leisure and Hospitality sector current employment is at 238,300 jobs.
• Manufacturing gained 300 jobs from January 2018 and 100 jobs from December 2018.
• Education and Health Services gained 6,500 jobs from January 2018, but lost 200 jobs from December 2018.
The seasonally adjusted number of employed individuals increased by 1,545 from December 2018 to 1,998,643. The seasonally adjusted civilian labor force, or the number of people who are employed in addition to those looking for work increased by 1,588 from December 2018 to 2,101,361.
Not seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment increased by 8,600 jobs from January 2018 to 1,961,600 in January 2019. This is the eleventh straight increase over-the-year. Not seasonally adjusted private sector employment increased by 7,400 jobs to 1,636,300 from January 2018 to January 2019. This is also the eleventh straight increase over-the-year for not seasonally adjusted private sector employment.
The not seasonally adjusted civilian labor force increased over-the-year by 1,650 to 2,081,509.
February seasonally adjusted data will be released on March 22, 2019. For additional state and MSA data release dates, please click here.