Shreveport wages climb as parish job counts quietly slip.
4.3%
Metro unemployment rate
Dec 2025, vs 4.2% national, 4.2% Louisiana (Aug 2026)
-0.7%
Caddo Parish employment change
Year-over-year to March 2026, despite 3.7% wage growth
+2,700 jobs (+1.6%)
Projected metro job growth
2026 forecast, 5th-largest gain among LA's 10 MSAs
2,102 jobs
Cyber Research Park employment
Up from 1,854 in 2024; projected 2,885 by 2027
This Month's Takeaways
01
Parish employment fell even as wages rose — a mismatch worth flagging.
Caddo Parish employment declined 0.7% year-over-year through March 2026 while average weekly wages grew 3.7%, a combination more consistent with labor supply tightness than with broad hiring expansion. Economic development messaging built around job counts alone may understate how constrained the available workforce has become.
02
Schlumberger's footprint is the clearest tell on where local demand concentrates.
800 employees now occupy the former GM facility, with 2.5 million square feet of a 3.3 million square foot campus still available, positioning the site as a bellwether for data-center and LNG-adjacent investment. Growth looks concentrated and project-driven rather than distributed across the broader local economy.
03
Advertised pay for technical and clerical roles is pulling in opposite directions.
Electrician pay rose significantly locally while administrative assistant and warehouse manager postings moved down moderately, echoing the national split between hands-on and white-collar demand. Local business investment decisions may need to account for this bifurcation rather than treat 'local labor costs' as a single number.
04
Metro job growth outpaces the parish-level softness it sits inside.
Forecasts project 2,700 new jobs (+1.6%) metro-wide in 2026, yet core-parish employment is already contracting slightly, implying growth is skewing toward Bossier Parish and project-anchored sites like the Cyber Research Park. Commerce leaders tracking 'the metro economy' as one number risk missing this geographic divergence.
Local Economic Conditions
Shreveport-Bossier labor market conditions remain tight by national standards, with the metro's 4.3% unemployment rate tracking below the national 4.2% peer comparison while Caddo Parish employment ticked down 0.7% year-over-year even as average weekly wages grew 3.7% — a sign local payroll growth has plateaued even as pay keeps climbing. Expansion at Schlumberger's reactivated GM facility and continued buildout at Bossier City's Cyber Research Park point to data-center and energy-services demand as the metro's clearest growth engine, offsetting softer momentum in retail and administrative roles where advertised pay fell this month.
Open Threads in the Data
Flat-to-declining parish employment alongside positive wage growth suggests the metro's labor market is tightening on the supply side rather than expanding on demand — a dynamic that matters more for workforce development and site-selection planning than for day-to-day staffing. Commerce leaders evaluating expansion or relocation decisions should weigh the Schlumberger and Cyber Research Park buildouts as evidence of durable, project-anchored demand rather than broad-based business growth, since most non-technical, non-energy occupational categories in the local pay data are flat or declining. Current conditions suggest reviewing workforce pipeline investments — technical training, trades, and research-park-adjacent programs — ahead of anticipated 2026-2027 job growth projections, rather than waiting for broader metro employment numbers to confirm the trend.
Advertised Pay Indicators · WageScape Benchmark 25 Jobs
Job postings data for the Shreveport-Bossier City, LA MSA metro — median advertised pay, its recent trend, and the number of active postings behind each figure. Jobs are grouped for readability and are not the same as the 10 sector classifications on the next page. For additional job detail contact WageScape.
Retail Trade
| Retail Sales Associate |
$25,625 |
→ Stable |
1,375 |
| Retail Cashier |
$22,880 |
↓ Moderate decline |
832 |
Transportation & Warehousing
| Warehouse/Fulfillment Associate |
$34,320 |
→ Stable |
356 |
| CDL Truck Driver |
$78,750 |
→ Stable |
2,492 |
| Delivery Driver |
$29,607 |
↓ Significant decline |
1,088 |
| Warehouse Manager |
$51,506 |
↓ Moderate decline |
21 |
Construction
| Construction Laborer |
$35,514 |
↑ Moderate increase |
72 |
Construction/Skilled Trades
| Electrician |
$70,000 |
↑ Significant increase |
172 |
| HVAC Technician |
$55,936 |
↑ Moderate increase |
46 |
Manufacturing
| Manufacturing Production Worker/Assembler |
$35,665 |
↓ Moderate decline |
160 |
Cross-Sector
| Customer Service Representative |
$33,799 |
↓ Moderate decline |
261 |
| Operations Manager |
$88,000 |
↓ Moderate decline |
35 |
Leisure & Hospitality
| Food Service Worker |
$28,662 |
↑ Moderate increase |
50 |
Healthcare
| Certified Nursing Assistant / Home Health Aide |
$32,760 |
↑ Moderate increase |
809 |
| Registered Nurse |
$93,013 |
↑ Significant increase |
3,355 |
Admin/Office Support
| Administrative Assistant/Office Clerk |
$36,788 |
↓ Moderate decline |
247 |
Information/Technology
| Software Engineer |
$126,844 |
↓ Significant decline |
28 |
| Data Engineer |
$89,440 |
↓ Significant decline |
14 |
Professional & Business Services
| Accountant |
$73,952 |
↑ Significant increase |
235 |
| HR Generalist/Manager |
$62,447 |
↑ Significant increase |
25 |
| Marketing Specialist |
$58,052 |
→ Stable |
2,423 |
| Business Analyst |
$91,070 |
↑ Significant increase |
18 |
Finance & Insurance
| Financial Analyst |
$75,950 |
↑ Significant increase |
39 |
Government/Education
| Elementary/Secondary School Teacher |
$47,527 |
→ Stable |
1,816 |
Cross-Sector Sales
| Account Manager |
$79,922 |
↑ Moderate increase |
229 |
Industry Snapshot · Shreveport-Bossier City, LA MSA
Advertised pay and job-posting trends across the whole metro economy, rolled up by employer industry — not just the bellwether roles above.
| Sector |
Median Pay Change |
Job Postings Change |
| Construction |
↓ −7.2% |
↑ +109.4% |
| Manufacturing |
↑ +15.4% |
↑ +122.3% |
| Retail Trade |
→ +0.4% |
↑ +39.5% |
| Transportation, Warehousing & Utilities |
→ +1.4% |
↑ +193.6% |
| Information |
↑ +7.3% |
↑ +109.8% |
| Financial Activities |
↑ +11.3% |
↑ +167.6% |
| Professional & Business Services |
↑ +16.6% |
↑ +108.6% |
| Education & Health Services |
↑ +21.4% |
↑ +50.4% |
| Leisure & Hospitality |
↓ −14.7% |
↑ +61.0% |
| Government |
↑ +86.0% |
↑ +640.8% |
Looking Ahead · Next 30–60 Days
Expected
BLS and Louisiana Workforce Commission September metro data releases in October will show whether the 4.3% unemployment rate held or drifted alongside the statewide dip to 4.2%. A continued gap between parish employment and wage growth would reinforce the tightening-supply read.
Worth watching
Cyber Research Park employment is projected to climb from 2,102 to 2,885 by 2027; near-term leasing or hiring announcements there would be an early signal the metro's technical-sector momentum is accelerating ahead of schedule.
Emerging pressure point
Louisiana's statewide labor force participation rate sits at 58.4%, 43rd nationally; if Shreveport-Bossier tracks that trend, local employers and economic developers may face a structural labor-supply ceiling even as project pipelines expand.
Potential inflection point
Statewide mega-project spillover — LNG, data centers, advanced manufacturing — has driven record Louisiana employment; watch whether any of that capital investment pipeline extends northwest into the Shreveport-Bossier footprint beyond Schlumberger.
Sources & Methodology
Pay and hiring data provided by WageScape. See every source cited in this report, with links →
Advertised pay reflects the pay ranges employers publish in active job postings in this metro, not survey or payroll data. Pay trends compare the current period with the prior period for the same metro and role. Sector figures group postings by the employer's industry classification; sectors with limited classified postings are marked as such rather than estimated. This briefing is independent of, and complements, official statistics from the BLS and state labor market information offices.
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