Employment rises in March in local parishes

Employment in three local parishes grew by more than 600 in March, and unemployment rates continued to fall, according to the latest numbers from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
In St. Mary, total nonfarm employment grew by 196 in March over the February total. The unemployment rate dropped by half a percentage point to 8.3%. The number of unemployed people actively seeking work fell by 96 to 1,555.
Assumption Parish’s unemployment rate dipped from 9.2% in February to 8.6% last month, when employment grew by 100 to 7,991. The parish had 751 unemployed people in March.
St. Martin showed the biggest gains among the three parishes, with an employment increase of 356 from February and a drop in the unemployment rate of 0.6 points to 6.7%. The number of St. Martin unemployed dropped by 110 to 1,471.
Employment across the three parishes is still down more than 500 from March 2020, the month when anti-COVID measures began to be imposed.
Statewide, March was the second straight month in which all nine of the state’s metropolitan statistical areas showed reductions in the unemployment rate.
Louisiana’s unemployment rate dropped by 0.5 points to 6.6% on the strength of increased employment of 27,000 to more than 1.9 million.
Among the biggest gainers among economic sectors was leisure and hospitality, which has been hit hard by economic restrictions designed to fight COVID-19. The sector grew by 4,900 in March month over month.
Manufacturing grew by 1,300 jobs last months, and mining and logging, the sector that includes most jobs in the oil and gas industry, was up 1,100 jobs to 28,300 in Louisiana in March. Within that category, oil and gas extraction jobs grew by 100 to 5,400, and support activities for mining was up by 700 to 19,300.
Ship- and boat-building, another important employer in St. Mary and the region, was steady in March at 5,300 statewide.
Statewide, employment in support activities for mining is down more than 23% from March 2020, and ship- and boat-building was down nearly 4%.