Help Wanted. Apply Within. Now Hiring. These phrases hang from doors, sit in windows, and are scribbled on chalkboards all across the greater New Orleans area. “If you come to the city of New Orleans and you don’t have a job, you’re not looking,” Cafe du Monde vice president Burt Benrud told CNN in 2005. It turns out, though, that the people of New Orleans, and a lot of other places, are looking.
Last September the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 17.7 percent due to Hurricane Katrina. The rate, however, has already decreased to 4.4 percent and is still going down. The New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner area was listed with the third largest jobless rate decrease in the Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary. It placed after the also recovering cities of Pascagoula and Biloxi, Miss.
This radical comeback is due to people like Joseph Peters. Peters, as reported in CNN News, reopened his tire repair store with Katrina’s water still in the streets and has kept busy ever since. With all the water-damaged cars from the hurricane, and a lack of competition, Peter’s hard work and commitment to the city has helped his store succeed.
Others have not bounced back so quickly; but each day, every week, more and more businesses are reopening and new ones are moving in. “Those people are going back into business. Trust me, they will be back … This is home,” Peters said.
The city is on its way to being cleaned, rebuilt and reawakened. CBS News did a story on post-Katrina New Orleans about a woman named Becky Zaheri who started a clean-up group called the Katrina Krewe. The group actually sprung up due to Zaheri’s “neat-freak” personality, and grew from 15 of her girlfriends to 300 volunteers.
“I was never an activist or community person, or politically inclined, or any of those things before. But this was just simply a catastrophe that happened to our city. If we wanted to live here and continue raising our kids here, I had to try and do something to make it better. I couldn’t just sit at home and watch,” Zaheri told CBS News.
It’s not just the volunteers that have helped restore the communities, however. There has been a huge contribution, especially from the Hispanic community, of workers building and renovating homes. Still, though, when you look in your Sunday paper at the want ads you will find list upon lists requesting workers, especially in the construction field. Dry-wallers, carpenters, plumbers – these positions just won’t seem to fill up, no matter how many non-Louisiana natives we seem to draw in.
As a member of the community of people that came back to New Orleans after Katrina, I’ve found myself among diverse company.
Some came to help, like my cousin who moved from Arizona to help restore homes and communities. Some came to work because of the vast job opportunities. And others, like myself, came because they remembered what New Orleans was like before the storm and they weren’t going to let the changes keep them away.
The influx of new arrivals to New Orleans, when mixed with the die-hard natives that wouldn’t let a hurricane budge them, has resulted in a community of hard workers, adventurous souls, good Samaritans and hell-bent homebodies. It is this group of people that have brought New Orleans back when nobody thought it could recover.
I’ve met classmates from all over the country and worked with people from all over the world. When we’re asked why we came we all reply in the same way … we give a gentle shrug and smile. There’s just something about New Orleans.
It’s hard to imagine a place that can’t be shaken by a hurricane. Some never left, some bounced back and others are coming in to start anew. But, one thing is for sure. What was once a question – even a doubt – can now be answered with certainty. New Orleans is back in business.
Sarah Robertson is a mass communication junior from Niantic, Conn.
