BATON ROUGE, La. (KALB) – A report released by the Louisiana Workforce Commission on June 25 revealed how unemployment rates changed in Louisiana in May.

According to the LWC report, with data directly sourced from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2024 unemployment rate in Louisiana decreased to 4.1% from April to May.

The unemployment rate saw a total decrease of 0.2% when compared to April’s rate of 4.3%. Despite an improvement between months, the unemployment rate was lower in May 2023, sitting at 3.4%.

The number of unemployed workers in May of 2024 was 86,120 individuals, an increase of over 16,000 people since May 2023.

The industries with the highest increase in jobs between May of 2023 and 2024 were construction with 6,500 jobs, government with 3,600 and professional & business services with 1,600 jobs.

According to the LWC from May 2023 to May 2024:

• Alexandria gained 600 jobs (61,900 jobs)
• Baton Rouge gained 6,800 jobs (423,800 jobs)
• Hammond gained 100 jobs (49,700 jobs)
• Houma gained 900 jobs (85,900 jobs)
• Lafayette gained 600 jobs (205,400 jobs)
• Lake Charles gained 1,700 jobs (96,800 jobs)
• Monroe lost 1,500 jobs (76,700 jobs)
• New Orleans lost 1,700 jobs (565,700 jobs)
• Shreveport lost 1,900 jobs (177,100 jobs)

All data cited from the Louisana Workforce Commission are ‘seasonally adjusted statistics’. Seasonally adjusted data are used to reflect how employment and unemployment measures change from month to month without the inclusion of season pattern influences such as holidays, agricultural harvests and school schedules.

You can view all unemployment data in Louisiana here.

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Copyright 2024 KALB. All rights reserved.

The following has been provided by the La Illuminator:

Louisiana Colleges will soon see more freedom in how they set tuition and mandatory fees, thanks to a bill that has now been put into law, without the governor’s signature.

House Bill 862 by Rep. Jason Hughes, D-New Orleans, would allow boards for Louisiana’s four university systems to set differential tuition for any graduate, professional or high-cost undergraduate programs. The bill would also give the boards complete control over mandatory fees.

The legislation was amended to align its effective date with a 2022 law that exempts certain graduate assistants from mandatory fees.

Differential tuition is an amount charged on top of base tuition for more expensive academic programs, such as lab-heavy curricula in science or engineering. The Board of Regents, the state oversight board for all higher education, would identify which programs are considered “high-cost.”

Louisiana requires a two-thirds of the Legislature to sign off on any tuition changes at its public colleges and universities. Most other states leave this decision up to higher education management boards.

Hughes’ bill would not allow university systems to raise fees and differential tuition more than 10% every two years. It also allows schools to lower tuition and fees without limits. The ability to lower tuition has been sought for some high-demand fields such as teaching. The bill would not have an impact on the cost of TOPS, which provides state-funded student aid to many Louisiana students, as the amount of the award is no longer directly tied to the cost of tuition.

The proposal also gives university systems control over mandatory fees for any program. Tuition and fees at Louisiana universities increased drastically during the 2010s, when the burden to finance higher education was shifted from the state to students.

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Copyright 2024 Louisiana Illuminator. All rights reserved.

Schools and colleges are required to set up these displays by Jan. 1, 2025.

When reached for comment, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement provided to CNA that the government “cannot comment on a lawsuit we haven’t seen [yet].”

“It seems the ACLU only selectively cares about the First Amendment — it doesn’t care when the Biden administration censors speech or arrests pro-life protesters, but apparently it will fight to prevent posters that discuss our own legal history,” Murrill said. 

The lawsuit, which represents nine families who have children in the state’s public education system, argues that the mandate violates both the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The text of the lawsuit alleges that a “state-sanctioned version of the Ten Commandments … prefers and imposes a set of distinct religious norms” on students. It further argues that the students will be “coerced into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious Scripture” by displaying the text. 

It also claims that the law violates parental rights by jeopardizing their “ability to direct their children’s religious education and religious upbringing.”