Katrina Pain Index 2013: New Orleans Eight Years Later
Eight years after Katrina, nearly a hundred thousand people never got back to New Orleans, the city remains incredibly poor, jobs and income vary dramatically by race, rents are up, public transportation is down, traditional public housing is gone, life expectancy differs dramatically by race and place, and most public education has been converted into charter schools.
Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. The storm and the impact of the government responses are etched across New Orleans. A million people were displaced. Over a thousand died. Now, thanks to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) and others, it is possible to illustrate the current situation in New Orleans. While some elected officials and chambers of commerce tout the positive aspects of the city post-Katrina, widespread pain and injustice remain.
New Orleans is still down about 86,000 people since Katrina according to the Census. Official population now is 369,250 residents. When Katrina hit it was 455,000.
Nearly half of the African American men in the city are not working according to the GNOCDC. Since 2004, the city’s job base has declined 29 percent. Fifty three percent of African American men in the New Orleans area are employed now. African American households in the metro New Orleans area earned 50 percent less than white households, compared to the national percentage of 40 percent.
Jobs continue to shift out from New Orleans to suburbs. In 2004, New Orleans provided 42% of metro or 247,000 jobs, now that number has dropped to 173,000 and the percentage has dropped to 34%.
Low paid tourism jobs, averaging a low $32,000 a year, continue to be the largest sector of work in New Orleans. But even this low average can be misleading as the hourly average for food preparation and serving jobs in the area is just over $10.00 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Median earnings for full-time male African American New Orleans workers are going down and are now at $31,018; for white male workers they are going up and are now at $60,075. Whites have experienced an 8 percent increase in middle and upper income households while African Americans