The gist: There’s been a lot of talk about brain drain lately, the exodus of educated talent. It’s become a meme-level concern among young professionals. But oddly, the data doesn’t necessarily back up the anxiety.
Metro Lafayette actually leads the state in brain gain. That’s a term I just made up. While Louisiana overall has shed its college educated workforce out of state, Lafayette has added 3,600 new residents in that cohort between 2005 and 2017, according to UL economist Gary Wagner. Lafayette appears to be sucking up that talent from other Louisiana metros.
Pause the celebration. Lafayette is doing better than a state that lags behind the rest of the country. And jobs are coming back slowly, relative to the losses. It’s possible, Wagner told a Downtown luncheon Wednesday, that Lafayette won’t ever recover the job losses.
Healthcare is poised to be Lafayette’s main economic driver. Oil and gas, the regional fuel for decades, has slipped to fourth among sectors in terms of wage share. But Lafayette’s healthcare industry has trended up and is just about to take its perch as the top sector. “Eds and meds” are often cited as the desirable white collar jobs to attract in economic development. To the extent that’s true, Wagner says, Lafayette is relatively well positioned to pounce.
Some obstacles are out of our control. Wagner argued that “bad state policies” in taxation and regulation are holding the state back. He characterized the raft of policies broadly, noting that the policies are longstanding thorns.