Climbing Back to Prerecession Employment Levels

The Atlanta Fed’s SouthPoint blog provides commentary and observations on regional economic topics, issues, industries, and trends.  “The Long Climb Ahead”, a recent blog post by Michael Chriszt, assistant vice president in the Atlanta Fed’s research department, explores how the states are doing in terms of getting back to prerecession employment levels, with a particular emphasis on Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia & Tennessee.  According to the post, “Georgia has not even started its climb, and when Florida looks up at where it needs to go to get back to where it was in terms of total employment, its climb is incredibly steep. Alabama has a long way to go, Mississippi and Tennessee are a bit farther along, and Louisiana is getting close to the summit.”

Mr. Chriszt also includes charts that highlight the divergence between public and private sector employment growth.  “Only six states fall in the ‘expanding’ quadrant for government employment, and only two states have private sector employment that falls in the ‘lagging’ quadrant.”   Consistent with the overall findings, Louisiana’s private sector employment momentum is ‘expanding’, although government employment momentum is ‘lagging’.  Click here to read the entire post