Governor Jeff Landry said this week that New Orleans is no longer as important to Louisiana as it once was. But Stephen Barnes, the director of the Kathleen Blanco Public Policy Center at UL Lafayette, said the New Orleans region has more influence on the state’s economy than any other metro area in the state.
“New Orleans is somewhere between 20%-25% of the state economy and a similar contribution in terms of the influence of the New Orleans economy on total state tax revenues,” Barnes said.
New Orleans does not have the population or the number of jobs it had pre-Hurricane Katrina. But Barnes says New Orleans is still a huge driver and has the largest concentration of economic activity in the state. Barnes said that is why it is still important that the state makes sure New Orleans succeeds.
“Sustaining that two-way street is critical to make sure that we can help every corner of our state grow,” Barnes said.
Landry made his comment that New Orleans is not as important as it once was at the announcement of Meta’s $50 billion investment in the Richland Parish A-I data center.
Barnes said, “I think that one project is really valuable, but it’s nothing like having a city like New Orleans, year after year, helping to support hundreds of thousand of jobs and contribute billions of dollars to the state economy.”