By DAN JUNEAU

The headline leaped off the front page of the local newspaper: “Job Loss in La. Among Worst.”

The article noted that, in the first half of the current year, Louisiana had a bigger jump in laid-off workers than in any state except Arizona. The numbers should not be startling to anyone paying attention to several trends in the Bayou State that have been crying out for attention, but have received little more than lip service from the power brokers in state government.

Louisiana continues to have many of its more educated and best-skilled individuals move to states that offer better job opportunities.

This very dangerous situation could get worse. It is not hard to understand the problem; what is hard to understand is why more of our elected officials are not attempting to do something about it.

Wages are determined primarily by demand. If there is a strong surge of economic investment and business growth in a state, businesses must compete fiercely for qualified workers. That competition puts workers in the catbird’s seat and empowers them to demand better pay.

Conversely, a stagnant economy decreases the demand for skilled workers and diminishes the upward pressure on wages. Louisiana is currently a textbook example of how this economic principle works.

For several years now, the sectors of our economy that pay the best wages – manufacturing, oil and gas, and construction – have seen either stagnant or reduced levels of employment, a fact confirmed by the latest employment figures released by the Louisiana Department of Labor.

Oil and gas lost 2,800 jobs in the last year, construction dropped 2,300, and manufacturing – the best paying jobs in any state – fell by an alarming total of 6,300.

Strong gains in employment are almost always accompanied by significant wage gains. Layoffs and job eliminations almost always signal flat or lower wages – and Louisiana is not an exception to that rule.

When skilled existing workers or qualified new entrants to the workforce look around in Louisiana, two things stare back at them: less opportunity for quality employment than in other states and, quite often, a lower potential wage due to stagnant economic growth.

What happens then? They leave in large numbers.

Louisiana has suffered a significant out-migration of skilled workers during the past decade.

Higher demand for their skills in other states sends them packing – and they generally do not come back. For a while, our out-migration problem was masked by the fact that our overall population rate was rising, albeit at a very slow rate. More people were born than died in the state, and that offset the out-migration totals.

Not any more. For the last two years, according to federal census data, Louisiana is showing signs of having a net loss in total population.

Is that sending cries of alarm through governmental circles in Baton Rouge? As the rental car commercial says: “Not exactly.”

Golden opportunities were lost in this year’s legislative sessions to take some small steps that would have sent a clear signal that our state government understood we had a problem and was critically interested in making this state a more profitable place for business and industry to flourish.

Instead, the main message from the sessions was more of the same: Government comes first, and fostering a strong economic climate is secondary to maintaining and expanding current levels of government.

The latest employment figures show that government is growing in Louisiana and our primary industries are shrinking.

Why more of our elected officials do not understand the implications of those numbers is a question voters should ask during the election campaigns next year. In the meantime, our best and brightest leave, and those who remain feel the pinch of the downward pressure on wages.

DAN JUNEAU is the president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.