Louisiana is projected to add 74,500 jobs over the next two years, extending a five-year run of job gains in the state since the pandemic, due to expansions in the liquefied natural gas industry and construction of Meta’s $10 billion artificial intelligence data center.
The job gains, if they occur, would represent a faster pace of job growth than the state is projected to add in 2025, according to economist Loren Scott, who released his annual economic forecast earlier this week at the Louisiana Business Symposium, an economic conference hosted by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.
Scott said Louisiana is expected to finally have more than 2 million jobs by the end of the year, and that number will grow over the next two years.
The state has come close to breaking the 2 million mark for nonfarm jobs in 2015 and 2019, but a drop in oil prices, then the COVID pandemic caused job numbers to plunge.
“Let’s hope for the best,” Scott said, noting that while data centers and LNG export terminals are adding jobs, there could be disruptions, such as AI taking away the need for some workers.
Lake Charles, which has two LNG terminals under construction and could potentially add two more before the end of the year, and Monroe, which will benefit from the Meta data center and two Entergy power plants providing electricity for it, are expected to be the fastest-growing regions of the state, according to Scott.
Both Lake Charles and Monroe are expected to post an 8% gain in jobs by the end of 2027, Scott said. That would add 8,600 jobs in Lake Charles and 7,500 in Monroe.
Lake Charles is benefiting from the Trump administration’s decision to move ahead with permitting LNG facilities quickly. That’s in contrast to the Biden administration’s move to pause export permits on manufacturing plants such as Calcasieu Pass 2, while their impact on global warming could be studied.
Since April, Woodside Energy has announced plans for the $17.5 billion Louisiana LNG facility in Calcasieu Parish, while Venture Global has started work on CP2, a $15.1 billion facility. Each plant will create 7,500 temporary construction jobs and several hundred permanent jobs.
Commonwealth LNG could go ahead and make a final investment decision on an $11 billion plant in Cameron Parish before the end of the year, Scott said. And the $10 billion Lake Charles LNG retrofit could get a final investment decision before the end of 2026, he said.
The job gains in metro Monroe are entirely driven by the Meta data center, which will create 5,000 construction jobs and up to 500 permanent jobs. Entergy plans to spend $2.2 billion to build two natural gas power plants to meet the needs of the data center, which will be around the size of 70 football fields. The power needs of the plant are significant; the Center for Energy Studies at LSU estimates Meta’s consumption alone will boost electricity consumption in Louisiana by 15%.
Scott said that the other major employers in Monroe, such as the Foster Farms poultry plant, the Graphics Packaging paper plant and the JPMorgan Chase Mortgage customer service center, are expected to see employment hold steady or even fall slightly.
Baton Rouge is projected to see a 4.9% job gain over the next two years, adding 21,600 new positions, thanks to industrial construction in Ascension Parish. Scott said more than $20 billion in projects are in motion, most are in the 17,000-acre RiverPlex MegaPark, a mixed-use development on the west bank of the parish bordering the Mississippi River. The RiverPlex MegaPark development will be anchored by the $5.8 billion Hyundai steel mill project which Gov. Jeff Landry and Ascension Parish officials committed $600 million to upgrade the MegaPark land with a wastewater treatment plant, road and rail updates and land purchases. The project will create 1,300 direct jobs.
All of the other metro areas in Louisiana are expected to see job gains that fall below the 3.7% increase that is projected to happen over the next two years.
Hammond and St. Tammany Parish are both projected to see 3.4% gains in new jobs. Hammond will be boosted by expansions at North Oaks Health System and Southeastern Louisiana University, while St. Tammany will be boosted by continuing gains at Globalstar and Pool Corp.
Shreveport-Bossier City is expected to see 3.3% growth because of growth prospects at the Cyber Research Park, the former GM plant and the Port of Caddo-Bossier. There’s a chance a data center could move into the area, because of the easy access to the abundant supply of cheap natural gas in the Haynesville Shale, Scott said.