“Small- and medium-size businesses serving Louisiana’s energy industry are shedding employees, dipping into personal savings or moving elsewhere to stay afloat. The administration’s war on fossil fuels is taking its toll.”
Investor’s Business Daily editorializes,
…A study released Monday by economic development agency Greater New Orleans Inc., or GNO, details the dire results to the federal deepwater drilling moratorium and its regulatory aftermath. While on the surface things appear to be going well, the supporting small and medium business infrastructure is struggling to survive.
The study says that despite the relatively limited employment losses reflected in public employment data, businesses are indeed laying off workers, reducing hours and salaries and limiting new hires as a result of the permit slowdown and insecurity about the future of the Gulf of Mexico.”
“You don’t see how badly they are hurting because they are still operating,” said Lizette Terral, New Orleans region of JPMorgan Chase Inc., a GNO board member. To do that, many have laid off workers, reduced hiring to replacements only and dipped into personal savings to the point of exhausting them…