Construction leads Shreveport-Bossier’s latest job gains, while the broader labor market shows a more measured pace
Shreveport-Bossier’s economy is adding payroll jobs, but the gains are uneven. Construction is expanding much faster than the overall job market, while manufacturing and education and health services are also ahead of a year earlier.
The metro area had an estimated 171,200 nonfarm payroll jobs in August 2026, up 0.3% from August 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The preliminary figures describe a market growing in some industries while losing ground in others.
Construction posted the largest percentage increase among the major sectors in the federal table. Employment reached 10,000, up 12.4% over the year. Manufacturing stood at 10,300, a 5.1% increase.
Those gains give the region’s industrial and building activity a prominent place in its current employment picture. They do not, by themselves, identify which projects generated the jobs or establish that every employer in those industries is expanding.
Education and health services added another source of growth. The combined category employed 34,300 people on payrolls, up 3% from a year earlier. It is a substantially larger employment base than either construction or manufacturing, illustrating why percentage growth and the size of an industry both matter.
A small sector can post a striking growth rate without becoming the region’s largest employer. A more modest percentage change in a large sector can still affect many positions. The accompanying scorecard presents both employment levels and annual changes so readers can see those differences.
The picture elsewhere was mixed. Professional and business services had 16,700 jobs, up 1.2% over the year. Financial activities held steady at 6,800.
Several major sectors remained below their year-earlier levels. Trade, transportation and utilities employed 34,500, down 2%. Leisure and hospitality stood at 20,000, down 2.9%, while government employment fell 3% to 26,000.
Those declines help explain why the region’s overall payroll growth was modest despite double-digit growth in construction. An economy is not a single industry, and gains in one part of the market can be offset by losses in another.
The comparison is August against August, not a measurement of hiring since January. The figures are not seasonally adjusted and may be revised. They count payroll jobs rather than individual employed residents, a distinction explored on the facing page.
The data also should not be read as a scorecard of announced economic-development projects. A hiring target stretching over several years is different from employment recorded in a particular month. The latest estimates offer a snapshot of the existing job base, not a forecast of what planned investments will ultimately deliver.
For Shreveport-Bossier, the next test is whether the strongest sectors sustain their gains and whether growth becomes more broadly shared. For now, the federal numbers describe progress at different speeds, with clear areas of strength but no uniform expansion.