New Orleans: Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities
Tourism’s post-COVID rebound has greatly bolstered New Orleans’ economic standing in recent months, as the city’s leisure and hospitality services industry grew 6% between August 2021 and August 2022. Other established sources of revenue for the city include numerous offshore petrochemical plants and the Port of New Orleans, which is in the midst of a $100 million expansion. One potential threat to the regrowth of the tourism sector, however, is the city’s newly acquired status as home to the most homicides per capita. In addition, New Orleans had far less employment growth than the rest of the top 10 – a data point supported anecdotally by a variety of employers, many of whom report a shortage of workers – which could indicate the city has even more room to grow in coming years.
