St. Mary adds 300 jobs in 3 months

Three consecutive months of increasing jobs and two straight months of a dropping unemployment rate may be signs the St. Mary Parish economy is headed in the right direction.

The parish added about 300 jobs from December 2018 to March and the jobless rate decreased by 1.2 percentage points from January to March.

Business at shipyards has been picking up significantly in recent months, and the deep-water energy sector is also improving, said Frank Fink, parish economic development director.

“I believe it’s going to be a slow recovery, and in 2020, it’s going to be much stronger,” Fink said.

St. Mary Parish’s unemployment rate decreased to 5.1% in March from 5.7% in February, according to the latest not seasonally adjusted statistics from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

The number of employed residents rose by 152 people during March, going from 18,668 in February to 18,820. The parish workforce, the sum of employed residents and those looking for work, rose slightly from 19,799 people to 19,825 people.

February’s unemployment rate was 5.7% compared to 6.3% in January. Also in January, 18,529 people were employed compared to 18,518 employed residents in December 2018 when the jobless rate was 5.7%.

The seven surrounding oilfield parishes of Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Martin, Iberia, Assumption, Vermilion and Lafayette all had increases in their number of employed residents and decreases in their unemployment rates.

January’s 6.3% jobless rate had broken a six-month streak of month-to-month declining jobless rates. From June to December, the rate had dropped 2.4 percentage points.

The number of employed residents in St. Mary Parish is also higher than it was at this time in 2018. In March 2018, St. Mary had a jobless rate of 6.7%, 18,780 employed residents and workforce of 20,134 people, the statistics showed.

A 15.8% increase in the requests of lists to rent property, mainly residences, in St. Mary Parish from the first quarter of 2018 to 2019’s first quarter is a significant sign, too, Fink said. The St. Mary Chamber of Commerce distributes those lists.

“It really shows activity of contractors coming and people doing things,” he said.

The most recently released sales tax collection report comparing March to March 2018 didn’t appear as promising as the job numbers. In March, St. Mary Parish sales and use tax collections were less than the same month of the prior year for the second consecutive month. Collections totaled $2.59 million in March, down 3.2$ from the $2.67 million collected in March 2018. Excluding collections made due to financial audits, collections dropped 1.1%.

February sales tax collections were down 10.5% from February 2018. But excluding audits, collections decreased just 1.2%.

However, January saw a healthy spike in collections with a 15.7% jump from January 2018. Excluding collections from audits, collections increased 4.9%.