NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Hurricane Katrina likely wiped out 11 years of employment growth in the New Orleans region and left it as the state's second biggest metropolitan area behind Baton Rouge, according to a report issued Wednesday by a group of university economists.
According to the report, the state will lose 59,700 non-farm jobs in 2005, drop another 158,900 in 2006 and then experience a rebound of 47,700 in 2007 -- if enough housing becomes available to support the New Orleans job market, a questionable proposition at best.
In the New Orleans metropolitan area, there will be 278,900 fewer non-farm jobs in 2006 than in 2004, showing no quick change in the region now largely emptied of residents and workers across all spectrums of the economy.
The report estimated that during 2006, employment in the New Orleans region will officially fall to its lowest level since 1965.
To put the storm damage in perspective, economist Loren Scott, a retired Louisiana State University professor who headed the development team for the report, said the oil-related recession that hit Louisiana from 1982 until 1987 cost the state 9 percent of its non-farm jobs, or about 148,000.
"We thought that was the mother of all recessions," Scott said. "This is almost twice as large."
The Katrina evacuation unofficially made the Baton Rouge region the state's largest metropolitan area, and the forecast said that title should be official in 2006. Scott said the area, which took in about 250,000 evacuees, likely will wind up as the permanent home for about 50,000.
The report estimated that 270,000 houses in the New Orleans region were destroyed or are uninhabitable now -- a figure that Scott described as conservative. "It's going to take decades, plural, to replace those homes, which is not encouraging," Scott said.
The report predicts that New Orleans will regain about 31,000 jobs in 2007, provided that half of the residences that sustained major storm damage can be occupied. That estimate does not consider destroyed homes.
"According to the National Homebuilders Association, that is a heroic assumption," Scott said. "We're really being optimistic with that figure."
