(July 14, 2009, New Orleans, La.) - The University of New Orleans, Division of Business and Economic Research has released its latest Metropolitan Report: Economic Indicators for the New Orleans Area including forecasts for the second quarter of 2009 through the first quarter of 2011.

Highlights of the report include the following:

• 1,100 jobs were added to the New Orleans metropolitan area when comparing the first quarters of 2009 and 2008. This small gain of 0.2 percent is a welcome sign of stability when compared to the national loss of 3 percent during the same period.
• Locally, the biggest employment gains over the year were state government (2,700 jobs), construction (1,700 jobs), and local government (1,200 jobs). Many of the jobs are in the areas of health care. Significant job losses were in employment and temporary agencies (1,900 jobs) and in financial services concentrated in leasing of equipment and real estate (600 jobs).
• Showing regional contrast, construction jobs in the United States lost 12 percent while New Orleans gained 5 percent. Durable goods manufacturing lost 2 percent locally but 11 percent nationwide.
• Unemployment is rising locally with an increase from 3.4 percent to 5.4 percent over the last year. The national rate moved from 4.9 percent to 8.1 percent during the same time.
• Estimates of retail sales in 2008 exceeded those of 2007 by 3.6 percent. This keeps retail sales 23 percent over pre-Katrina levels. However, the first quarter of 2009 shows a drop of 3.8 percent from the same quarter the previous year.
• New population figures released by the U.S. Census put the total New Orleans metropolitan population at 1.13 million as of July 2008. Orleans Parish gained 24,000 over the year while the other six parishes gained just under 1,000 people altogether. These gains leave Orleans Parish at 69 percent of pre-Katrina levels and the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as a whole at 87 percent of its old population.
• Due to national recessionary pressures, a loss in local employment of 2,200 is expected in the first year of the forecast. As the nation starts to pull out of the recession in 2010, the job trend is expected to reverse with an addition of 5,500 in the second year of the forecast.

Thanks to its sponsors, the Metropolitan Report is accessible free of charge on the UNO, College of Business Administration's Web site, http://www.unobusiness.com/.