New Orleans' recesssion recovery leads the nation

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New Orleans' recesssion recovery leads the nation

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New Orleans' recesssion recovery leads the nation

Written by Don Ames

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(Photo by: Charlie Varley/Sipa Press)

New Orleans fared better than any other metro area in the U.S. in recovering from the recession during the second quarter of 2012, according to a report by the Brookings Institute.

In fact, that's the second quarter in a row that New Orleans was the top-performing metro area in the country.

The Brookings MetroMonitor report measures factors like unemployment, home prices and gross metropolitan product (output), measured against a city's lowest economic point.

That gives New Orleans a decided advantage.

For most of the country, the baseline for economic recovery is the great recession that began in 2007, and most other U.S. metros bottomed out during the recession in 2009.

But, for New Orleans, the economic shock was delivered by Hurricane Katrina, and the city's recovery is measured from the first quarter of 2004.

"For New Orleans' purposes, the recovery began after Hurricane Katrina," says Brookings data manager Alec Friedhoff.

So, New Orleans got a jump on other cities, with its recovery measured from Quarter 1 of 2004.

Friedhoff says the huge influx of recovery money after the storm gave New Orleans' recovery quite a kick start, actually before the great recession began.

He says post-Katrina New Orleans is experiencing an unprecedented rebuilding effort that's created new jobs and is spurring economic growth.

"Anytime a place deals with such a severe trauma, its bounce back is going to be quick, by normal standards," says Friedhoff.

"That gives New Orleans a longer time period to recover, therefore it appears at the top of our ranking."

But, New Orleans still has quite a story to tell, and the City is doing just that.

READ MORE AT WWL.COM