BRAC produces an economic indicator dashboard as part of our business recovery priorities. The dashboard examines and assesses the impact of COVID-19 on the regional economy, taking into account a number of data points to illustrate the economy’s current state, and to keep businesses informed as it begins to steady and rebound. Past dashboards are archived on brac.org/recovery.
Starting today, BRAC will once a month include monthly jobs and unemployment data that looks at level of recovery by industry, comparison to peer metros, and unemployment by parish within the Capital Region.
Key findings from this week’s dashboard include:
- Even with 15,500 jobs regained since April, job loss in the region is still significantly higher than the height of the Great Recession. The Capital Region jobs are 9.5% lower, compared to 6.2% lower in early 2010;
- Baton Rouge has not seen the jobs recovery that it peer metros have – while we’re still nearly 10% off our pre-pandemic job count, they are all within 4-6%;
- This lag is due to the continued restrictions keeping Leisure & Hospitality jobs down 27% from pre-pandemic levels, and construction jobs down 19% due to delays in industrial expansions and fewer contractors allowed within the fence-line at facilities;
- Weekly unemployment claims continued to fall for the eight consecutive week, and are down 30% within that timeframe;
- Hotel occupancy rates stayed strong at more than 50% higher than a similar week in 2019, due to the continued presence of evacuees from Southwest Louisiana.