WALLETHUB'S 2018 BEST PLACES TO GET A JOB Last week, the website Wallethub released its 2018 Best Places to Get a Job and out of 182 cities, it rated Shreveport, La. as last place. Jill Gonzalez is an analyst with Wallethub. First off just what is WalletHub? She said " WalletHub is a personal finance website that is really consumer-driven so that it helps consumers make the most educated financial decisions they possibly can. That of course includes where to be looking for a new job. We looked at the 150 most-populated cities plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state. " When asked about the sampling methodology used for the WalletHub jobs report, Gonzalez explained " It's important to know that this is a study of aggregated data. It's not a poll, it's not a survey; we didn't ask people in Shreveport or business owners in Shreveport if they think it's a great place. We looked at the numbers and really compared it to other cities i the country of varying sizes; so a lot of these 'data-points' come directly
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the (U.S.) Census itself, and we did compared that across about 25 different metrics ranging from the job market, job opportunities, employment rate, and industry variety, to things like living there --what does the housing affordability look like, what are transportation costs, crime rate, etc." The WalletHub website says two key dimensions went into this report: job market and socio-economics, to which one was weighted more heavily than the other. "The job market did hold more weight here." Gonzalez explained further " So when we're looking for things like job opportunities, employment growth, average starting salaries, we're obviously looking for competitive numbers here and unfortunately Shreveport could do a lot better across most of those metrics." Since WalletHub's report came out there's been quite a bit of reaction, mostly critical in that it didn't take into account the regional aspects of the Shreveport-Bossier area. When pointing out the four-parish region which has seen some significant growth over recent years, with Bossier parish in particular as one of the fastest-growing parishes in Louisiana, Gonzalez replied "Much of this data is on a 'city-wide level' so it's not including the surrounding metro area. It's only looking at city-proper and that really is how the data is collected by the Census, by the BLS. So unfortunately, we can't have any control over the sample size. " WalletHub did however acknowledge some 'good news' in their findings about Shreveport. Gonzalez mentioned " There are some metrics where Shreveport did better, it ranked pretty highly in industry variety so that's hopeful that they aren't putting all their eggs in one basket. And it also ranked in the top 25 towards under-employment rate, which is hugely widespread and becoming more of a problem in many of the bigger cities. They might have better unemployment numbers but in Shreveport we see more of a 'balancing-out effect'. So it's certainly not all bad for Shreveport. I think nationwide, we're looking at a really great year for jobs that will be felt in most parts of the country; hopefully Shreveport included."
