Partly because the city of New Orleans had just begun to recover from Hurricane Katrina when the Great Recession began, it suffered less job loss relative to its pre-recession state and GDP actually grew 3.9 percent between 2008 and 2011. No other Southern metropolitan area cracked two percent in the same period.
Charles Davidson, writing for EconSouth, offers the following evidence of New Orleans’ resilience in the face of the Great Recession. The first chart shows that it lost a smaller percentage of its jobs than the U.S. as a whole.
This is even more significant as it looks, as New Orleans had been in economic decline for decades before Katrina. Davidson reports that “the economy in New Orleans since Katrina has reversed decades of decline and outperformed the nation and other southern metropolitan areas.” Consider: The job growth in New Orleans shown in the second chart may not look impressive, but compare it to the extraordinary declines of its neighbors.
Thanks to greater diversification of its economy, record tourism, and rising investment money, the city may be setting itself up for a revival.
This post originally appeared on Sociological Images, a Pacific Standard partner site, as “Saturday Stat: New Orleans Weathers the Great Recession.”
