In September, Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois set off on a tour to visit some of the companies that drive the state economy, seeking feedback on how the agency can support them.
She met with Louisiana Plastic Industries, a plastic product manufacturing company in West Monroe, in one of the first legs of the trip, where company leaders shared some of the employee recruitment and retention challenges they’ve experienced recently. Louisiana Plastic Industries had struggled with a shallow talent pool for open roles, particularly for workers who would maintain the company’s large machinery.
“We’ve experienced the same recruitment and retention challenges other employers have experienced as well,” Louisiana Plastic Industries CFO Deion Hemphill said.
Within the past six to eight months, their workforce issues have stabilized, Hemphill said, thanks to help from Louisiana Delta Community College. But the state’s overall workforce development issues haven’t subsided, especially as it prepares to meet about $98.1 billion in industrial projects. Skilled industrial labor demand is expected to peak at 120,000 by the third quarter of 2027, according to data from the Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance.
Now, a new partnership between state agencies and organizations is hoping to make recruitment easier for Louisiana businesses.
The Business Workforce Solutions pilot program establishes a framework for the state to address employers’ needs, as Louisiana ramps up to meet the labor needed for industrial projects and shortages of health care and skilled trades workers. The state’s eight economic development organizations will serve as points of contact for businesses in need of employee recruitment, retainment and training support, reducing the number of entities employers contact when seeking help with their workforce.
The organizations then work with the initiative’s other partners, Leaders for a Better Louisiana, Louisiana Economic Development and Louisiana Community College and Technical System, to find a solution, which could include promotion of certain job opportunities or refurbishing the state’s certification and training offerings. A goal of the initiative is to prevent employers from having to reach out to all parties individually.
Louisiana Works Secretary Susie Schowen said state partners tend to overlap in outreach to employers to learn about their challenges in attaining and retaining employees. The initiative’s framework identifies a point of contact and consistent set of expectations for employers when they consult state partners to help them procure talent, she said.
“Coordinating that into a single open door for the employers to walk through is ultimately what we’re trying to do,” Schowen said.
The redundancy issue in employer outreach also led to a concentration of attention toward larger companies, she said, and the initiative aims to address the needs of small to mid-sized businesses.
“This just puts a framework around it that assures that there are open lines of communication, that there are good ways to share information received from employers to the people who can actually do something about it,” she said.
Demand for workforce support
A document outlining how the state will achieve its economic goals identified “misaligned talent production and workforce services” as a challenge for state talent.
Last year, Bourgeois embarked on a tour of the state’s eight economic development areas to garner feedback from businesses on how the state can assist their growth. A straightforward process for workforce development was among the responses, according to Tedra Cheatham, executive director of LED FastStart, the agency’s workforce recruitment, training and retainment program.
LED will ensure the response from partners in the initiative leverages regional strengths and the state’s target sectors.
“Businesses consistently shared the need for a clearer point of contact, stronger coordination among workforce and education partners and solutions that better reflect the pace and realities of hiring,” Cheatham said in an email. “That feedback informed the design of this initiative.”
‘A natural fit’
Trey Godfrey, the Greater Baton Rouge Economic Partnership’s senior vice president of talent development and policy, said the initiative will address the common pain points for employers, from upskilling their current employees to creating a talent pipeline into their company.
It builds on the organization’s existing duties: the partnership meets with about 140 companies each year to learn about their needs to inform the legislation that the organization advocates for. In the 2025 legislative session, the partnership pushed for workforce training programs, including the M.J. Foster Promise Program, a financial-aid program for adults pursuing degrees needed for high wage, high demand jobs.
Chris Masingill — president and CEO of Louisiana Central, an economic development organization for central Louisiana — said the initiative will quicken the organization’s response time to connecting employers with resources for workforce development. Louisiana Central already has a close relationship with Central Louisiana Technical Community College and works with business leaders on a daily basis, he said, so the organization serving as a point of contact for the initiative was a logical choice.
“It was a natural fit for us to step up and be a conduit,” Masingill said.