Category Archives: Regional Economic Development

Mired in the Middle: Why Restoration Jobs Matter for Mid-Gulf States

By | Bio | Published: December 29, 2011

People living in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, which lie at the core of the five-state region bordering the Gulf of Mexico, are far more likely than average Americans to have been born and raised in the states where they reside as adults, according to an article published last month on The Atlantic's "Cities" blog. Data from the 2010 American Community Survey showed that an estimated 78.8% of Louisianans were born in the Bayou State (by comparison, only 58.7% of adults in the United States as a whole were born in the states where they presently live), and although Alabama (70.0% of adults born in state) and Mississippi (71.9%) also ranked high for the relative rootedness of their residents (10th and 6th, respectively), they both placed lower than Louisiana, which ranked 1st among all states.

Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Census, Birthplace, Economy

Sedentary Center: In 2010, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi ranked 1st, 10th, and 6th, respectively, for the proportion of residents born in state, making the mid-Gulf region one of the least transient sections of the United States. By contrast, Texas (25th out of the 50 states, with 60.5% of residents born in state) and Florida (49th out of the 50 states, with 35.2% of residents born in state) ranked much lower due to heavy influxes of Americans from other parts of the country and immigrants from abroad to fast-growing metropolitan areas like Houston and Miami (Sources: The Atlantic, U.S. Census Bureau)

 While some observers have lumped the central Gulf states together as the tail end of a socioeconomically stagnant “Stuck Belt” stretching from the Upper Midwest to the Deep South, it would be fairer to say that the entrenched settlement patterns of the mid-Gulf region have had both good and bad economic consequences. On the one hand, the region’s distinctive cuisine and culture, nurtured and preserved by its long-established residents, serves as an important driver for the central Gulf Coast’s multi-billion dollar tourism industry. On the other hand, the fact that area residents are disproportionately likely to depend on familial support networks tethered to the Gulf economy means that mid-Gulf staters are especially vulnerable to location-specific shocks like hurricanes and oil spills if and when they hit the region. Furthermore, when one considers that the central Gulf Coast, already one of the poorest regions in the country, has seen stable to increasing unemployment at a time when jobless rates have been falling in much of the rest of the nation, it becomes clear that there is a real need to do something about generating local jobs and making the mid-Gulf economy more resilient to ecological and economic stress.

One way to do this is to pursue a sustainable development strategy along the central Gulf Coast that provides opportunities for area residents to restore regional ecosystems. This would create immediate work for people living in counties recovering from the BP oil disaster, and it would improve the long-term prospects for habitat-dependent industries like tourism and commercial fishing that have been affected by years of wetland loss and industrial disasters.

There’s encouraging news that a comprehensive restoration program could be implemented in the near future. Earlier this month, the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force released its final report outlining strategies for reversing the deterioration of the Gulf Coast’s ecosystem, a transformative course of action that could help the mid-Gulf states emerge stronger from the present crisis. However, any progress on that front is contingent on congressional action to commit oil spill penalties from last year’s disaster toward environmental work, a move that would help the central Gulf Coast to remain a well-loved (and well-lived in) place for future generations.

 

 

Related Links

Data on Domestic Place of Birth in the United States, 1980-2010 [U.S. Census Bureau]

Lifetime Mobility in the United States: 2010 [American Community Survey Briefs]

The Geography of Stuck [The Atlantic Cities]

Unemployment Data Bolsters Case for Regional Restoration Jobs Bill [Restoration and Resilience]

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Demographics, Unemployment | Leave a comment

Free Trade and a Functioning Mississippi River Delta

By | Bio | Published: November 4, 2011

Last month, in a rare moment of cross-party agreement, the U.S. Senate passed three free trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia that were signed into law shortly thereafter by President Obama. While the respective agreements were criticized by some, they were largely embraced by Midwestern agricultural companies and interest groups seeking to increase American exports to East Asian and Latin American markets.

As these free trade agreements are put into action, the Mississippi River Delta will play a central role in enabling commodity flows from firms in the center of the United States to their clients overseas. That’s because the easiest (and often cheapest) way to ship soybeans, corn and other bulk goods from places like southern Illinois to ports in South America is by barging them down the Mississippi River and transferring them to oceangoing vessels at shipping facilities in southeastern Louisiana.

Already, Louisiana’s ports are an important point of departure for exports to Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and it is likely that the state’s share of waterborne trade with these three countries will increase as lowered trade barriers and eased trade restrictions boost foreign demand for American grain and other agricultural produce funneled down the Mississippi.

 

agriculture, colombia, south korea, panama canal, louisiana, wetlands

Even before the October trade agreements, Colombia, Panama, and South Korea were already important export destinations for Mississippi River watershed producers, as shown in the above charts. Much of the projected $13 billion increase in annual American exports stemming from these three free trade deals will be shipped via New Orleans and other coastal Louisiana ports, further reinforcing the links between Midwestern firms and the Mississippi River Delta (Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, World Trade Center New Orleans)

But what if this river system, whose function is considered a given for Midwestern exports, suddenly wasn’t working properly? What if the movement of harvested beans and corn was impacted each harvest because of more frequent storm disruptions at Louisiana ports that were once shielded from the Gulf of Mexico by miles of protective wetlands? What if the navigation channels that course through the southern reaches of Louisiana were rendered impassable more often because of weakening wetland buffers along their banks?

These “what if” scenarios could become the new normal if action isn’t taken to prevent the collapse of the Mississippi River Delta. Free trade, fair trade and all trade down the Mississippi and out to the rest of the world would be severely hampered if the navigation, shipping and warehousing infrastructure of the central Gulf Coast – particularly coastal Louisiana – faced greater threats from hurricanes, floods and land loss. These disruptions would translate into economic losses and job losses all along the Mississippi River and its upriver tributaries.

We can reduce the likelihood of this happening by putting in place the large-scale restoration projects needed to restore and revitalize the Mississippi River Delta. Right now, Congress now has a chance to give this idea a big boost by passing the RESTORE the Gulf Coast Act. Respective versions of the bill in the House and the Senate include provisions to dedicate Clean Water Act penalties from the 2010 BP oil disaster to ecosystem and economic restoration efforts in the Gulf States affected by the spill. Such legislation would establish the framework for rebuilding the Mississippi River Delta’s lost marshes and swamps and ensuring the long-term viability of waterborne trade from the central United States to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond.

 

 

Related Links

America's Artery of Commerce: The Mighty Mississippi [The Traverse City Record-Eagle]

Point of Consensus: Why Gulf Coast Restoration Should Be a Priority for Republicans and Democrats in Congress [Restoration & Resilience]

Roads, Railways, Runways…and Restoration: The Case for a Swamp Stimulus [Restoration & Resilience]

Top 25 Freight Gateways: Port of New Orleans [Bureau of Transportation Statistics]

Also posted in Congress, Targeted Jobs, Trade | 1 Response

Mississippi River Redesign: A Top Green Job

By | Bio | Published: October 24, 2011
Louisiana, New Orleans, Mississippi River

Source: Flickr (Feuillu)

Brie Weiler Reynolds, a writer and social media coordinator for the employment search firm FlexJobs, recently blogged about several surprising green careers that might be appealing to workers looking for a career shift into the sustainability space. As we’ve mentioned before on our blog, the transition can be difficult for people who feel that they lack sufficient credentials to work in well-known green sectors like renewable energy development or smart grid policy, but Ms. Reynolds identified five positions in the FlexJobs database that would suit a plethora of interested candidates.

Here’s the funny coincidence: guess what appeared near the top of her five-point list? An opening in coastal Louisiana restoration! We were pleasantly surprised to see that she placed the (currently unfilled) position for the Project Design Manager on the Lower Mississippi River Delta Initiative in the number two slot (Kudos to Brian Jackson for spotting her rankings on Twitter).

Restoring the Mississippi River Delta and managing the river for restoration, navigation and flood control is an important issue for the people and economy of coastal Louisiana and the nation. In partnership with the Van Alen Institute, Environmental Defense Fund is launching a design competition to pinpoint the best engineering, design and architecture ideas for delta restoration. And while the lead on this project wouldn’t necessarily be piloting a hopper dredge in Lake Borgne or laying pipelines for marsh drainage in the Central Wetlands Unit, s/he would be contributing significantly to the overall goal of rescuing the imperiled delta ecosystems that make up southeastern Louisiana.

It’s too soon to say if we’ll get a burst of new applicants thanks to the FlexJobs post, but that fact that folks like Brie Reynolds are putting more emphasis on restoration as a green sector is good news.

 

 

Related Links

Announcements for Lower Mississippi River Delta Initiative Project Manager Opening: [Delta Dispatches], [Idealist], [LinkedIn]

Why Coastal Restoration Should Be Coupled With Enhanced Educational Opportunity in Louisiana [Restoration & Resilience]

Also posted in Green Jobs, Targeted Jobs, Wetlands | 2 Responses

What the Conservation Economy Means for the Mississippi River Delta

By | Bio | Published: October 3, 2011

The following is a guest post by Jessica Goad and Kiley Kroh from the Center for American Progress (CAP). Ms. Goad serves as the Manager of Research and Outreach for the CAP’s Public Lands Project, and Ms. Kroh serves as the Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Washington-based organization.

Center for American Progress, Green Jobs, Rebuild the American DreamWhile coastal degradation is a serious concern for communities throughout the country, it poses a particular threat to the ecosystem and economy of the Mississippi River Delta. Louisiana is home to 40 percent of the wetlands in the continental United States but experiences about 80 percent of all wetlands losses across the country.  This not only harms habitats, but removes billions of dollars’ worth of natural flood protection and environmental services from coastal communities.  Further, the damage wrought by the BP oil spill continues to threaten industries such as tourism and fisheries that drive local economies throughout the Gulf Coast.  However, restoration projects and their recreation benefits are putting residents of the Mississippi River Delta back to work and rehabilitating these critical resources.

For example, the Central Wetlands Unit (CWU) is a 30,000-acre expanse of degraded marsh near downtown New Orleans.  As a new study conducted by Restore America’s Estuaries found, the $72-million project is on track to create 280 direct jobs and 400 indirect and induced jobs, for a total of 680 jobs over the project’s life.   Once restored, the project will provide long-term ecosystem services and economic benefits for the community – and is just one example of the vast potential offered by the conservation economy.

Center for American Progress, Restoration, Louisiana, Gulf Coast, Wilderness, NatureLast week, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a report called “The Jobs Case for Conservation:  Creating Opportunity Through Stewardship of America’s Public Lands.”  The report lays out the employment and fiscal impacts of different categories of the conservation economy—recreation, restoration, renewable energy development and sustainable forest management.  We demonstrate that protecting lands and oceans creates jobs, that policymakers should promote policies that manage lands for the conservation value, and that the conservation economy has already created hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.

Another CAP report released earlier this year with Oxfam entitled “Beyond Recovery” found that addressing the Gulf’s challenges with a regional plan for ecosystem restoration can directly create tens of thousands of jobs. As both publications highlight, restoration jobs also encompass a wide range of education and skill level, from construction workers to contractors to engineers to scientists helping ecosystems return to their undamaged states.

A handful of government and academic studies have attempted to quantify the jobs impacts from conservation, but in “The Jobs Case for Conservation,” we found from various analyses that in general, every $1 million invested in restoration activities creates between 13 and 30 direct, indirect and induced jobs, many in the private sector.  The same holds true for similar projects undertaken in the Gulf Coast region – analysis conducted in “Beyond Recovery” found that each $1 million in investment in wetland restoration can create 29 new jobs.  The design, construction, operation and monitoring of large-scale coastal and marine restoration projects bear the potential for sustaining job creation and increasing ecosystem services vital to supporting existing coastal industries such as fishing, tourism and shipping.

The myriad jobs that can be created from recreation are critical to the future of coastal Louisiana and the Mississippi River delta.  A recent report from the Department of the Interior found that recreation on its lands created 388,000 jobs in 2010 alone.  These jobs include direct, indirect and induced jobs, which in the Mississippi River Delta means work and revenue for outfitters and guides to take visitors to fishing in the Gulf; gear companies that sell equipment to hunters and anglers headed for the Delta National Wildlife Refuge; and the hotels, restaurants, gas stations and other service businesses that cater to visitors from around the world such as restaurants outside of the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge.

As both CAP reports emphasize, economic and environmental recovery are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, investing in wetlands and coastal restoration creates nearly six times as many jobs as investments in traditional economic drivers such as oil and gas. In these tough economic times, facilitating coastal restoration presents a perfect opportunity to create jobs and support small businesses, while simultaneously protecting some of America’s most unique ecosystems and prosperous fishing and shellfish industries.

Policymakers both regionally and in Washington, D.C. have a clear opportunity to support the ideas suggested in both CAP reports.  In particular, we need to boost government capacity to conduct restoration activities, fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and pass the RESTORE the Gulf Coast States Act. The RESTORE Act would direct 80 percent of Clean Water Act fines charged to BP and other responsible parties directly to the five Gulf Coast states to immediately begin ecological and environmental restoration, and establish a National Endowment for the Oceans supporting ocean and coastal restoration efforts in all 35 coastal and Great Lakes states.  With these and more policies in place, coastal Louisiana will be poised to gain the jobs and financial benefits of the conservation economy.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Congress, Employment Ratios, Green Jobs, Guest Post, Multipliers, Oil Spill, Stimulus, Targeted Jobs, The White House, Water, Wetlands, Wildlife | 3 Responses

Unemployment Data Bolsters Case for Regional Restoration Jobs Bill

By | Bio | Published: September 28, 2011

Is there a deepening jobs crisis in the Deep South? Judging by a recent chart from The New York Times, the answer might be yes.

As part of a story about the increasingly regional nature of joblessness in the United States, the Times featured an infographic that illustrated how unemployment rates have varied across America over the past four years.

The cartographic snapshots, sourced with information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Moody’s Analytics, show the level of joblessness in each state in December 2007 (considered the “start” of the Great Recession by the business cycle monitoring committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)), June 2009 (the “end” of the recession, as judged by NBER), and August 2011 (the most recent month of available data).

The data reveal that the southern United States, which had ridden out the early part of the recession better than other sections of the country, now seems to be experiencing worsening labor market conditions while jobless rates in other parts of America are trending downward.

Unemployment, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Labor, Statistics

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Moody's Analytics, The New York Times

Here are three points worth mentioning:

  • If you compare the maps for June ’09 and August ’11, you can see that Louisiana is one of only 15 states that witnessed a rise in its unemployment rate after the end of the recession. As we noted in a post earlier this year, much of this increase may have been attributable to the BP oil disaster and its aftermath on the drilling, fishing, tourism, and oil servicing sectors.
  • The jobs situation hasn’t been much better elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. Of the 10 states in the top quintile for unemployment last month, three – Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi – border the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Three Gulf Coast states rank among the top 10 for jobless rate rises since the summer of 2009, with Florida (+0.5%) in tenth place for June ’09-August ’11 unemployment growth and Mississippi (+0.7%) in seventh place behind Louisiana’s western neighbor, Texas (+0.8%), where jobless rates rose from 7.7% in June 2009 to 8.5% in August 2011.

The spike in regional unemployment means that is all the more necessary for federal and local officials to craft policy solutions aimed at putting the Gulf Coast back to work. Luckily, there’s a bill in Congress right now that could do just that.

The RESTORE the Gulf Coast States Act will channel billions of dollars worth of Clean Water Act penalties from parties responsible for the Gulf oil spill towards restoration projects in states that were directly impacted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. This funding will rebuild important natural habitats in and around the Gulf of Mexico, and it also will translate into jobs for construction workers, wildlife managers, engineers and scientific researchers.

A win for the environment and a win for a troubled economy: let’s just hope Congress can put this plan into action.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Demographics, Oil Spill, Unemployment | Leave a comment

Environmental Organization Links Habitat Restoration to Job Growth in New Report

By | Bio | Published: September 26, 2011

The following is a guest post from Restore America’s Estuaries President Jeff Benoit.

Efforts to secure adequate federal funding for on-the-ground restoration of critical coastal and estuarine habitats has traditionally depended on arguments related to the ecological importance of these resources. We can no longer rely on good common sense conservation to prevail as we face harsh partisan politics that propose to randomly slash funding and programs that protect our health and contribute significantly to the economy. It’s the latter, the economy, that the conservation community needs to focus more attention on to stay in the game.   Restore America’s Estuaries recently released a report that clearly demonstrates that coasts and estuaries are not only essential to the nation’s economy, but that investments in coastal habitat restoration produce jobs in a cash-strapped, job-starved economy at a higher rate than many other sectors, including oil and gas, road-infrastructure, and green building projects.

The report, “Jobs & Dollars: Big Returns from Coastal Habitat Restoration,” lays out a powerful case for government and private investment in the nation’s coasts and estuaries, drawing on national and regional studies of coastal and estuarine restoration projects and setting out its findings in restoration case studies. As just one example, coastal habitat restoration typically creates between 20 and 32 jobs for every $1 million invested. In comparison, road infrastructure projects on average create seven jobs per million, oil and gas return just five jobs, and green building retrofits produce 17 jobs per $1 million invested.

I invite you to read the report and think about how it relates to your efforts.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Congress, External Media, Green Jobs, Guest Post, Stimulus, Targeted Jobs, Unemployment, Wetlands | Leave a comment

Events: Getting the Water Right, Getting the Jobs Right, August 12

By | Bio | Published: August 10, 2011

This Friday, the Rev. Percy M. Griffin Community Center in Davant, Louisiana will be hosting “Getting the Water Right, Getting the Jobs Right”, a coastal restoration forum co-sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, the Gulf Restoration Network, and several other non-profit organizations. The event is also being supported by Royal Engineering, Dillard University, and the governments of Plaquemines Parish and St. Bernard Parish.

The sessions will begin at 9 AM and will conclude at 4 PM. The forum will be a great opportunity to learn about local initiatives to protect the coast and to discuss how wetland restoration will translate into jobs for area residents.

To RSVP or to get more information, please contact Rev. Tyrone Edwards at (504) 473-2996. You can also e-mail him ziontcc15@yahoo.com

Also posted in Events, Green Jobs, Targeted Jobs, Unemployment | 2 Responses

Summertime Blues for 700,000 Unemployed on Gulf Coast

By | Bio | Published: August 5, 2011

In nationwide Gallup surveys, August consistently ranks as one of the most popular months for taking a long vacation. It’s easy to see why. With school out of session and offices half-empty, more than a third of all American workers choose to spend some portion of the last full month of summer away from the daily grind.

Why, then, does this August feel different? Maybe it’s because a halting sense of lethargy that has settled on the labor markets of Louisiana and its neighboring states. Roughly 700,000 people in cities and towns along the Gulf Coast find themselves idling away August without the promise of a cubicle, a corner office, or a work counter to return to come September. These residents of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas are part of a huge cohort of jobless Americans struggling to find gainful employment during one of the worst periods of job creation in decades.

Late last month, Jeremy Proville, a Geographic Information System (GIS) specialist who works for Environmental Defense Fund, helped us to create a map that vividly depicts unemployment on the Gulf Coast. The red wedges on the respective pie charts show the share of unemployed persons in each of the respective cities, and the area of each pie chart corresponds to the size of the metro area’s labor force. Thus, the biggest circles sit over the Houston metropolitan area (with just under 3 million people in its pool of employed and unemployed persons), the Tampa metropolitan area (with just under 1.3 million people in its labor force), and the New Orleans metropolitan area (with about 550,000 people in its pool of current and potential workers).

Unemployment in Gulf Coast metropolitan areas, May 2011. The bar charts show jobless rates in five cities – Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, and Tampa – in May 2010 and May 2011 (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)

While the unemployed are concentrated in the biggest cities, it’s interesting the note that some of the highest unemployment rates are found in smaller urban centers like Beaumont, Texas and Cape Coral, Florida (see below chart for data on nineteen Gulf Coast metropolitan areas). Unlike a metropolis such as Houston, these mid-sized cities are often more dependent on one or two economic sectors. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to prolonged downturns if a critical, local industry like energy extraction (in the case of Beaumont) or real estate development (in the case of Cape Coral) suffers a severe shock.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Though the labor market data presented above is from May 2011, there has been little to no progress on reducing unemployment in the few months since then. If anything, it’s likely that the fraction of unemployed people in the region actually has risen over the past several weeks.

This joblessness isn’t just a personal issue; it’s also a cause for community concern. People who are unemployed–or earning a little income here and there–probably would lack the resources to evacuate their homes if a hurricane came barreling towards the coast. In addition, they might have fewer means of getting money to rebuild if a storm surge leveled their houses and destroyed all their possessions. Six summers ago, we saw the devastating impact that Hurricane Katrina and levee failures had on poor communities of the central Gulf Coast, but thousands of area families remain at risk if disasters of similar magnitude were to strike again this August.

What, then – if anything – will help the cities of the region to overcome these challenges? For starters, we could put thousands of people to work on projects that would restore the Gulf Coast’s ecosystems, especially its wetlands. We also could commit the necessary resources to improve community resilience by investing heavily in hazard mitigation. In fact, if you juxtapose our unemployment map with the coastal vulnerability index chart that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) distributed in its latest Gulf of Mexico report, you clearly can see why coastal protection would be a smart bet for regional urban centers like Galveston and New Orleans. These paired strategies – ecosystem restoration and economic resilience – would be tremendously important for protecting existing job centers on the Gulf Coast, given the concentration of heavy industry and infrastructure along the shores of the five state region.

To that end, Environmental Defense Fund has been working diligently to sketch out how restoration should proceed in the Mississippi River Delta and other sections of the coast. Earlier this week, our organization even submitted recommendations for restoration strategies to the White House in a report we co-authored with six other non-profits. We suggested small-scale proposals, including barrier island and oyster reef restoration, as well as mammoth sediment diversions to rebuild the fragile fabric of the Gulf Coast’s littoral wetlands. In addition, we’ve been collaborating actively with members of the Senate to secure the necessary funds for implementing a transformative environmental restoration program on the Gulf Coast.

Of course, we’ll have to wait until September (at the earliest) before the Senate and the House of Representatives commit a dollar of BP’s fines or a dollop of river sediment towards bettering the environment and the economy of the Gulf Coast.

After all, members of Congress need their August breaks too. 

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, Congress, CWPPRA, Demographics, Green Jobs, Stimulus, Targeted Jobs, Unemployment | Leave a comment

How the RESTORE Act Could Kickstart Job Growth Along the Gulf Coast

By | Bio | Published: July 27, 2011

A Sign of the Times: A fenced-off construction site fends off jobseekers in New Orleans. Unemployed residents of the Gulf Coast are finding it hard to secure work opportunities as a jobs drought continues into its fourth year (Source: Flickr (Editor B))

This summer, most Americans beyond the Beltway have not been spending their days dwelling over the merits and faults of “cut, cap, and balance” or the nuances of loophole adjustments in the “Gang of Six” plan. Instead, they have been waiting for Democrats and Republicans to shift their attention from the debt ceiling and deficit reduction to a subject that has seemingly fallen off of Washington’s radar: jobs.

True, politicians on the left and the right have mentioned improved prospects for job creation in their respective arguments for tax reform and spending cuts. But the apparent lack of progress on actually tackling joblessness in Louisiana and other states has forced concerned observers in academia, business, government, and the nonprofit sector to sound the alarm for more urgent action on unemployment.

On July 17, Meet the Press host David Gregory assembled a leadership panel to discuss the challenges facing the American economy.  Joblessness was the top concern voiced by Marc Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans who currently serves as head of the National Urban League.  Morial said that the United States needs a robust new “jobs plan” to get its sluggish economy moving again. Though the U.S. is now in its second year of a post-recession expansion, the persistently high rate of unemployment has continued to hammer households and hinder consumer confidence.

We can see why struggling industrial centers in the Northeast or hard-hit cities in the Southwest might need a “jobs plan,” but is that a necessary prescription for Louisiana and its neighbors? Let’s look at some employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and economic ratios for wetland restoration work to see why a localized job creation initiative that emphasizes environmental rehabilitation could be great for the Gulf Coast.

A Cap on the Well, But No Lid on the Unemployment Rate

A year after the capping of the Deepwater Horizon well, the states ringing the spill zone have had some admitted economic successes. Despite the worst fears, signs of economic revival have appeared in different pockets of the region. For example, non-farm payrolls in the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux metropolitan area reportedly rose by 5,300 between January 2011 and June 2011, equivalent to a 5.9% jump in the number of employed workers for that section of the Mississippi River Delta.

There have been broader signs of recovery as well. For example, the recreation sector – an important source of jobs in the five-state region – has been benefiting from an unexpected uptick in visitors, as budget-conscious travelers and their families forego foreign excursions for beach trips to Galveston, Gulfport, and Grand Isle.

But despite this encouraging news, the shadows of the spill and the effects of the Great Recession continue to cloud prospects for employment growth. Seasonally-adjusted unemployment numbers for nineteen metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) adjacent to or on the Gulf of Mexico show that while some metro areas reported declines in unemployment between May 2010 and May 2011, most did not. In fact, six of the MSAs closest to the Deepwater Horizon site – Mobile, Alabama; Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, Lake Charles, and New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, Louisiana; and Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula, Mississippi – saw increases in unemployment of 0.3% or more over the twelve-month period.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Even in Gulf Coast MSAs where jobless rates fell, unemployment levels in May 2011 remained high. For example, in the Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent metropolitan area in northwestern Florida, the jobless rate fell by 0.5% from May 2010 to May 2011, but the unemployment rate in late spring 2011 (9.8%) was still 0.7% above the national average of 9.1%.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

While Texas was less directly affected by the oil spill due to circulation patterns in the Gulf of Mexico, it too witnessed rising unemployment in its coastal cities, with four of the six metro areas surveyed reporting jobless rate increases between May 2010 and May 2011.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Overall, we find that the total number of unemployed people in the nineteen Gulf Coast metropolitan areas fell by just under 7,000 people during the twelve-month period from May ’10 to May ’11, largely due to big declines in unemployment in Florida cities like Tampa and Cape Coral. Still, such news provides cold comfort for the more than 680,000 people who remain unemployed in the major metropolitan areas of this region. Furthermore, the figures presented do not include the tens of thousands of unemployed people in rural counties and parishes that aren’t lumped into the U.S. Census Bureau’s subset of metropolitan sampling zones. And when we consider how severe the unemployment crisis remains in areas closest to the spill (the New Orleans MSA had the biggest increase in unemployed persons (May 2010 – May 2011 change: +5,976) of all the metro areas examined), it becomes clear that the Gulf Coast needs to redouble its efforts on creating jobs.

But what sort of program could quickly get people working in Brownsville, Biloxi, and Bayou Cane? Is there a silver bullet that will bring unemployment in Pensacola and Pass Christian to its knees? We think the answer might lie in ecosystem restoration.

Why the RESTORE Act Would Help Economic Recovery

The entire Gulf Coast is facing severe environmental challenges. We have already referred to the Mississippi River Delta’s land loss crisis throughout our blog, but there are other estuaries and coastal habitats like Apalachicola Bay and the Sabine River wetlands that will also need heavy investment in restoration work. Integrated within these efforts is a need to rehabilitate the Gulf of Mexico, whose marine life has been adversely affected by the loss of wetland breeding grounds, the increase of nitrate and phosphate flow through thinned coastal marshes, and the release of oil and dispersants during last year’s spill.

Source: Flickr (Steve Rhodes)

We could ameliorate the situation right now – and improve the long-term sustainability of cities, infrastructure and industries ringing the Gulf of Mexico – by putting people to work on efforts to revive wetlands, rebuild oyster reefs and restore barrier islands. Previous efforts at economic stimulus did not do enough to fix the situation, meaning that there is a long list of projects to complete all along the Gulf Coast.

In coastal Louisiana, expedited construction of important river diversions at Myrtle Grove and other sites could create hundreds of jobs for engineers, scientists, and contractual laborers. In Alabama, dozens of people could be put to work on shoring up sand dunes near Fort Gaines, a historic site on Dauphin Island that could crumble into the sea because of coastal erosion. Further afield in places like Florida, local residents could replant mangrove swamps and reseed degraded salt marshes. Per $1 million invested, these efforts often generate more jobs than traditional regional sectors like energy extraction, and because many of them require minimal training, these programs could immediately employ thousands of jobless people regardless of skill level.

How the long-term jobs plan will take shape remains to be seen. It might involve a mix of tax credits, corporate investment, federal funding, and private initiative. It will certainly require innovative partnerships between government bureaus along the Gulf Coast and universities and research institutes scattered around the region. However, in the short term, the prospect of potentially transformative funding from BP’s Clean Water Act penalties should serve as a catalyst for community action on shaping these proposals and sketching out what they will entail.

Some of that work is already taking place in Louisiana. Part of the $1 billion in early action NRDA payments from BP will soon be put to use on several dozen environmental projects in the Pelican State, and the news last Thursday that a bipartisan coalition of nine Gulf Coast senators was now cosponsoring the RESTORE Act heralded hope that a huge stream of funds, large enough to address the twin problems of economic growth and environmental recovery in this battered region, would finally be reaching businesses from the Florida Keys to the Rio Grande.

Others have discussed the idea of green jobs in Gulf Coast restoration before, and last year’s spill provided a dry run for an environmental jobs program when BP hastily hired thousands of area residents for temporary cleanup work. Now, without the duress of an immediate environmental catastrophe like the Deepwater Horizon explosion, we have the opportunity to thoughtfully address the bigger issues facing the region and implement a well-executed plan to save it.

We need Congress to pass the RESTORE Act, but it won’t happen without your help. We hope that by sharing this post with your colleagues and friends, you will spread the message that investing billions in ecosystem restoration would be a great way to help the Gulf Coast’s environment and to get its people back to work.

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, Congress, Demographics, Green Jobs, Oil Spill, Stimulus, Targeted Jobs, The White House, Unemployment, Wetlands | Leave a comment

School’s Out Forever? Why Louisiana Should Couple Coastal Restoration with Educational Opportunity Enhancement

By | Bio | Published: July 7, 2011

Source: Flickr (Tulane Public Relations)

This season of caps, gowns, and commencement speeches has drawn to a close for coastal Louisiana’s class of 2011. For graduates of Dillard, Loyola, Nicholls State, and other colleges and universities in the Mississippi River Delta, landing a position at a company that designs water management systems, executes transactions in carbon markets, or develops models for hazard risk reduction in hurricane-prone communities will be difficult given the tough state of the job market and the newfound cachet attached to employment at cutting-edge firms in the environmental space.

However, for their friends with far fewer years of schooling, getting these sorts of green jobs will be practically impossible. Though there are plenty of good positions in the restoration and hazard mitigation sectors that pay solid, middle class wages, some of the better-compensated positions require years of prior academic and technical training.  In addition, while Louisiana has long been known for harvesting and harnessing its natural resources, it’s historically had a less-than-stellar record when it comes to nurturing and developing the untapped academic potential of its residents.

Since jobs like shrimping and supplying oil rigs are no longer paying the bills for thousands of Louisiana residents and their families, the need for both short-term and long-term strategies of boosting restoration employment across education levels is greater than ever. In this post, we look through some background information on the state of education and earnings in southern Louisiana before presenting several ideas for coping with the crisis.

Money and Class in the Mississippi River Delta

Though per-pupil funding for universities and primary schools rose in the latter half of the last decade, Louisiana consistently has ranked low in per-capita spending on elementary and high school education. During the 2003-2004 academic year, Louisiana spent an average of less than $4,400 on instruction for each of the students in its elementary and secondary schools, placing it 34th among the 50 states in per pupil spending. The state ranked even lower on graduation rates: researchers from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette found that less than two-thirds (only 65.9%) of Louisiana ninth graders graduated from high school within four years, placing the Pelican State at 44th place among the 50 states for secondary school completion during the mid-2000s.

These poor educational indicators have in turn limited the economic prospects of a significant share of Louisiana’s residents, as we can see in charts on educational attainment, income, and socioeconomic status in the Mississippi River Delta.

The graphs in this post draw on information from the American Community Survey, which is conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. They show summary statistics on years of schooling, wage levels, and poverty rates in the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the much smaller Houma MSA to the southwest. Together, these two metro areas account for most of the population of the Mississippi River Delta.

First, we see that for far too many delta residents, school ends too soon. Compared to the population of the United States as a whole, people in the two metropolitan areas are less likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree or a high school diploma.

Source: American Community Survey, United States Census Bureau

Second, when compared within attainment brackets (e.g., “college graduates in the Mississippi River Delta” vs. “college graduates in the rest of the United States”), we see that residents of coastal Louisiana generally earn less than other Americans, and that the huge gap in earnings between people with advanced degrees and people without high school diplomas is almost perfectly mirrored when one looks at income distributions in the New Orleans metropolitan area and across the United States (see chart below). In contrast, the median wage profile of the Houma metropolitan area is flatter, with less-educated workers earning comparatively more than they do nationally, and better-educated workers earning comparatively less.

Source: American Community Survey, United States Census Bureau

For example, during the 2005-2009 period, people with less than a high school diploma earned far less in the New Orleans MSA (median wage of $18,137) than they did in the Houma MSA ($25,284), where high school dropouts’ median earnings were over 30% higher than the national average ($19,420) for workers who failed to complete secondary school. By comparison, the median wage for workers with graduate degrees in the Houma metropolitan area was only $54,342, about 4% less than the median for professional school graduates in the New Orleans metropolitan area ($56,325) and over 13% less than the national median for workers with doctorates, law degrees, etc. ($62,708). Houma MSA residents with less education might have fared better than expected during the 2005-2009 period because the region enjoyed low unemployment rates due to its heavy reliance on offshore drilling, fishing, and other sectors that provide plentiful employment opportunities for people with few educational qualifications. Of course, this situation has changed dramatically since ’09 due to the BP oil disaster in 2010 and the drilling and fishing moratoriums that followed.

Lastly, we see that coastal Louisiana residents with fewer years of formal schooling also are more likely to live in poverty, because when they are employed, they often are limited to low-paying jobs. During the 2005-2009 period, this was true in both the New Orleans metropolitan area and the Houma metropolitan area, though the poverty indices were lower in the latter than the former.

Three Takeaways

What does all data this mean as we consider strategies to boost delta restoration employment in southern Louisiana? Here are three quick takeaways:

  • First, short-term employment in environmental restoration must be structured to include more opportunities for people with less than a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent.If we are going to address environmental and social justice issues in the Mississippi River Delta, there should be a big emphasis on generating job growth for positions that do not require long periods of training and that pay living wages. Since a larger-than-average share of Louisianans do not attend college, the short-term shortfall in technically trained experts could force the state to bring in outside consultants and advisors during the early years of an extensive restoration program.

 

  • Second, since a disproportionately high number of Louisiana residents do not have college career centers or university alumni networks to tap into for learning about these opportunities, efforts to promote environmental restoration work should begin in earnest at vocational centers and high schools.In addition, officials could consider loan forgiveness, subsidized training courses, and summer internship programs to make wetland restoration a more compelling career choice. This strategy could be especially useful in the Houma metropolitan area (Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes) because the area’s relatively high energy-sector wages might eclipse those for advertised positions in the environmental sector. 

 

  • Third, more must be done to tailor school coursework at the tertiary level (colleges, universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics) and secondary level (high school, secondary school, university-preparatory school) to prepare students for positions in the restoration sector. Parish and state education officials must rectify the mismatch between curricula rooted in the 20th century and growth industries tailored to 21st century needs if southeastern Louisiana is to fully benefit from its investments in coastal restoration. The rebuilding and maintenance of coastal wetlands could spawn a suite of innovative tools that have not yet been imagined, just like what has occurred in renewable energy and other green industries. Unfortunately, Mississippi River Delta residents might not have the training at present to capitalize on potential opportunities in hazard mitigation, scientific monitoring of ecosystem benefits, and restoration of “green infrastructure” like wetlands. Translating local ideas and quick fixes developed by Louisiana workers into patented, exportable technologies will be difficult if local people lack guidance on how to accomplish this goal. The successes of North Carolina’s Research Triangle and California’s Silicon Valley are the result of decades of support from local schools and partnerships between multinational firms, financial institutions, and ambitious entrepreneurs. The formation of a “Coastal Restoration Cluster,” anchored by educational institutions such as Louisiana State University and Tulane, could be one way to achieve something similar in Louisiana. 

 

We know that ecosystem restoration will create jobs for people in the central Gulf Coast, just as it already has done in the Everglades, the Chesapeake Bay region, and the Great Lakes. Louisiana cannot afford to have millions of citizens boxed out of the best-paid positions in this growing sector because of a lack of local training opportunities. If the Mississippi River Delta is going to embark on ambitious programs to restore its natural capital, it should simultaneously take active steps to develop the local human capital needed to ensure its economic success.

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