Construction is underway on data centers and LNG facilities in Louisiana. This week, ground will be broken on the Hyundai Steel in Ascension Parish and construction begins next year on SpaceX’s Louisiana Starbase. So how will the state fill all these jobs? Louisiana Works Secretary Susie Schowen says many of these jobs are classified as skill base jobs.
“That really does mean that people can prepare themselves for these jobs without needing to get a huge amount of education to go and get a bachelor’s degree or something like that,” Schowen said.
Schowen says not only do they need workers for Meta, Woodside Energy, Hyundai and SpaceX, there will be job opportunities with businesses that service these mega projects.
“We’re going to have plenty of jobs with everybody else, and these are not transient jobs; we are going to need these kinds of workers far into the future,” Schowen noted.
Schowen says they expect the workforce to come from young college graduates, people who move into the state for the jobs and more importantly, existing residents who could use a better way of life.
“Who are either underemployed or just not working at all,” Schowen said.