Baton Rouge Job Growth - August 2023

Great news for Baton Rouge on the job creation front as 4,300 new jobs were created in August 2023! Currently our unemployment rate is hovering around 3.1% which is great news as well.

What's even more interesting is that Baton Rouge has added 11,000 jobs year over year which puts us at #1 among our peer group of cities in job growth creation! Our peer cities that we measure ourselves against are:

- Birmingham, AL

- Columbia SC

- Greenville, SC

- Little Rock, AR

- Louisville, KY

- New Orleans, LA

- Lafayette, LA

We outpaced each and every one of those cities in the number of jobs created over the last 12 months which is a tremendous accomplishment for our local economy.

A couple of other fun numbers are that the Baton Rouge metro jobs market encompasses 422,100 total jobs and our unemployment figure has been below 5% for 24 consecutive months.

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber does a fantastic job in tracking, researching and publicizing our region's economic underpinnings. I highly recommend clicking through this link to their website to read through all the amazing economic analysis they have and continue to perform.

There are several drivers for this job growth with the primary one being continued plant expansions and new plant construction projects. Loren Scott (local economist) estimates that there is currently $12 billion dollars in plant construction/expansion projects already underway with another $19 billion that have been announced and are awaiting final funding commitments.

He noted that Turner Industries, which is a large construction/project management firm, has already hired close to 3,000 new workers to support their local construction projects.

Additional drivers of employment growth in the Baton Rouge area are the Amazon Fulfillment Distribution Center that is scheduled to open mid-2024 and will employ around 2,000 people. And local companies such as Community Coffee, Capitol Produce & Blue Runner beans are expanding their facilities with capital projects and will be increasing hiring as well!

Our economy in Baton Rouge is charging ahead and because of the job growth, will continue to put stress on the local housing market. There are not enough houses to buy and/or rental properties to house this influx of workers into our area. I do not expect housing prices to fall despite continued elevated interest rates. In fact, housing prices will continue to rise and there will continue to be investment opportunities in multi-family due to the increased number of workers now in our market. We are pulling workers from outside the Baton Rouge area in order to fill all these jobs and they've got to have a place to live.

Are you interested in buying or selling a home? I'd love to visit with you, no pressure! Call, text or e-mail me.

Interested in searching online for available homes in the Baton Rouge market? Click on this link to go to my website. It will require you to register to fully browse, but your contact information will come directly to me. You can search freely on my site and contact me when you are ready to speak!