Figures

1

The number of Fortune 500 companies still based in Louisiana, according to an Associated Press analysis. Entergy, headquartered in New Orleans, remains the only Fortune 500 company with a corporate home in the state after the departure of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Freeport-McMoRan was acquired by Phelps Dodge Corp., creating the world’s largest copper company. Its corporate headquarters will be in Phoenix.

$575 million

Ark. Gov. Mike Beebe signed into law a measure that will allow Arkansans to vote on a proposal to issue $575 million in bonds for highway improvement. The proposal will be on the November 2008 ballot and will give the state Highway Commission bonding authority through Dec. 31, 2013, if passed.

$9,800

The so-called “tort tax” paid by every American family to pay for the nation’s legal system, according to a new study released by the Pacific Research In-stitute, a think tank based in San Fran-cisco. The total $865 billion cost of the U.S. legal system is 27 times more than the federal government spends on homeland security and 13 times what the U.S. Department of Education spends on educating America’s children. The costs include not just the direct cost of annual damage awards, plaintiffs’ attorney fees, defense costs, and administrative costs from torts but also the indirect cost of the legal system’s impact on research and development spending, the cost of defensive medicine, the related rise in health care spending and reduced access to health care, and the loss of output resulting from deaths due to excess liability.

75,000

Louisiana gained 75,000 seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs between February 2006 and February 2007, bringing the number of workers in the state to 1,899,000, the Louisiana Depart-ment of Labor announced. The February unemployment rate was 3.9 percent compared to 3.7 percent in January. The state’s industries ad-ded 5,700 jobs over the month, leading to an unemployment rate below the national Feb. 2007 rate of 4.5 percent and the state year-ago revised rate of 4.3 percent. Louisiana’s civilian labor force — those working and seeking work — in February increased to 1,999,030, from 1,996,573 in January. The number employed
in February was 1,921,389, down from 1,922,107.

Topics Louisiana