NEW ONLINE ECONOMIC TOOL - A new economic tool was unveiled last week that provides quick and free access to economic data for Northwest Louisiana – Caddo and Bossier Parish specifically. The Northwest Louisiana Economic Dashboard is a joint effort of the LSUS Center for Business and Economic Research Center and the Shreveport Chamber of commerce. It was designed to provide a quarterly overview and visual representation of a range of economic indicators impacting Northwest Louisiana. Douglas White is the director for the LSUS CBER.
"The idea was we wanted to put together some economic stats and demographic stats about the local area so that people actually had data to talk about the area, to tell stories," White explained.
The dashboard will be available for download and as an LSUS-hosted website that will include economic indicators such as employment, travel, housing, casino revenue, and oil and gas exploration among others, all in a single, easy-to-access format. The dashboard can help verify or even dispel common economic impressions. For example, take population outmigration from Caddo Parish, White says the dashboard data revealed some surprises.
"One of the things we found while putting this thing together is you know, everyone thinks oh the common impression is that Caddo parish / Shreveport has lost population which is true but everyone assumes that population has basically moved across the river over into Bossier (parish) or Bossier City. And when you look at the actual migration data that's not true. That actually over the last five years more people have moved from Bossier parish to Caddo parish than the other way around," White said.
Data for the Dashboard was collected from various open sources such as Federal, State, and Local agencies and some proprietary data from industry sources. You can download the dashboard data –just go to www.lsus.edu and search Center for Business and Economic Research and scroll down to the NW LA Economic Dashboard.
