Louisiana is one of the worst states for workers, according to a new report from Oxfam. The report, which tracked how states pay, protect and support workers, ranked the Pelican State 41st overall and 39th for both wage policies and the right to organize. Louisiana was in the middle of the pack (24th) for worker protections. The report’s authors note how the state stacks up against its regional peers:
Louisiana and Arkansas rank closely in the labor index. Virginia leads the Southeast region through worker protections and compensation. It has a minimum wage of $12.00 per hour, 28.4% of what it takes a family of four to cover basic costs in the state. In Louisiana, the minimum wage is $7.25, 19.5% of the cost of living for a working family.
Click here to view Louisiana’s state scorecard.
The geography of an unequal recoveryÂ
The U.S. economy has replaced all the jobs lost during the pandemic and created millions more. But 43% of U.S. counties still haven’t returned to their pre-pandemic job levels. The New York Times’ Ben Casselman and Ella Koeze break down the geography of this unequal recovery:
[The winners] are concentrated in the South and the Mountain West, particularly in suburban counties, which have done well in an era of remote and hybrid work. They tend to be places where job losses were comparatively mild in the first place, often because their major employers were in industries that were less affected by — or that even benefited from — the disruptions of the pandemic. They are, on average, richer and better educated than counties that have been slower to rebound. They voted disproportionately for Donald J. Trump in the 2020 presidential election. The losers, by contrast, tend to be concentrated both in big cities, which were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and in rural areas, which were struggling long before the virus struck.
While much of the winners were concentrated in the South, Louisiana still struggled. The number of leisure and hospitality jobs in the state decreased by around 8% from 2019 to 2023, behind only Hawaii and the District of Columbia. The number of construction jobs decreased by more than 5%, the largest in the nation.
Public sector pay gap is widening
The pay gap between public and private sector workers increased during the pandemic, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. State and local government employees earned 17.6% less on average than their similarly educated counterparts in the private sector from 2020 to 2024. The pay gap before the pandemic was only 13.9%. But as the report’s authors note, the gap was smaller in states with strong public-sector collective bargaining rights:
(P)ublic-sector pay gaps are wider for government workers who have no (-22.9%) or weak (-20.1%) bargaining rights compared with those with strong bargaining rights (-14.9%). But these gaps have widened across the board since the pandemic. The biggest change was among workers with strong bargaining rights, who have lost ground since the pandemic. Even so, they continue to fare better than workers with weak or nonexistent rights.
A slew of anti-worker bills, including a proposal to bar public-sector employees from collective bargaining, were introduced during the 2024 Louisiana legislative session. Fortunately, most of those proposals were shelved after more than 150 union members and activists, including Invest in Louisiana, protested outside of the state Capitol.
Louisiana’s economy is a mixed bag
The Council for a Better Louisiana recently released the Louisiana Fact Book, which examines how the state is faring across five crucial areas: education, the economy, health and well-being, infrastructure and the environment and energy. CABL president and CEO Barry Erwin, in a guest column for the Times Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate, breaks down their findings:
In terms of the economy, it’s more of a mixed bag. There seems to be improvement for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Poverty rates are down and income rose by almost 3.5%, though that was at a lower rate than the rest of the country. But the broader barometers of the state’s economic well-being show concerning trends. Population loss and outmigration are a continuing problem. Employment growth has been almost nonexistent over the last decade, and while it did tick up slightly over the last year, that was far less than what was seen in almost every southern state.
Number of the Day
13,799 – Reduction in total jobs in Orleans Parish in 2023 compared to 2019, a 7% decrease. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics via the New York Times)