Despite the recent talk of a slight uptick in the oil and gas business, when comparing 2008 to 2018, nearly 11,000 jobs were lost in the Acadiana area.

 President and CEO of the Lafayette Economic Development Authority Gregg Gothreaux says the drop in the oil industry has seen a domino effect in job losses in other sectors.

“Those 11,000 jobs, particularly since 2014, have caused another 10,000 plus jobs also to go away, and so about 20,000 people have lost jobs.”

 Gothreaux says while much of the loss is linked to the drop in oil prices, about a thousand jobs were lost due to changes in the energy industry.

 “They are related to the energy industry becoming much more efficient, but the roughly 10,000 or close to it are directly related to the drop in oil prices.”

 Gothreaux says many of the workers are diverse in their skills and have found jobs with petrochemical projects. He adds with the volatility of this oil industry, any comeback would likely be modest.

 “The general sense is that they will not come back completely and in fact, they may never come back completely because the oil industry has changed so much.”

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