nola.com · Stephanie Riegel · September 6, 2026
Can SpaceX, Meta mega projects end La.'s economic malaise? | Business News | nola.com
# SpaceX, Meta, Hyundai. Can these multibillion-dollar deals change Louisiana's fortunes?
- By STEPHANIE RIEGEL | Staff writer
#### Stephanie Riegel
- Author email (stephanie.riegel@theadvocate.com) - Sep 6, 2026 - 1 hr ago - 6 min to read
At the recent event announcing that Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to build the world’s largest commercial spaceport in coastal Vermilion Parish, even Gov. Jeff Landry, who negotiated the $100 billion deal, seemed stunned by the magnitude of the whole thing.
“I’ve struggled, really struggled to find the words,” Landry told more than 400 elected officials, lobbyists and business leaders gathered in an event space in Abbeville. “It is hard for people to wrap their head around.”
Starbase Louisiana, as Musk has dubbed the project, is the largest single capital investment in the state’s history. It promises to bring thousands of jobs, potentially tens of billions in economic activity and a foothold in a growing industry, as SpaceX hopes to eventually launch as many as 1,000 rockets a year into orbit.
And it’s just the latest of several megaprojects that Louisiana’s residents are grappling with.
In July, social media giant Meta announced it will double the size of its data center in Richland Parish, a now $50 billion investment that promises 1,000 jobs and thousands more construction workers. In the Shreveport area, Amazon Web Services is building an $18 billion data center across three campuses. In Ascension Parish, Hyundai is forging ahead with an $8 billion steel mill.
Along the coast, meanwhile, more than $75 billion is flowing toward terminals to export liquefied natural gas, or LNG.
Landry and his economic development chief, Susan Bourgeois, have said the megaprojects, which total $250 billion since Landry took office in 2024, represent the state’s best hope for reversing decades of stagnant population and wage growth.
“We are creating quality jobs across different sectors — data centers, a clean steel mill, aerospace and aeronautics,” Bourgeois said. “That is what drives opportunity ... and hedges against the ebbs and flows of oil and gas, which is still our sweet spot.”
As the list of the mega projects grows, though, so do the questions about whether they'll deliver and what the state and its people are giving up in return.
The Landry administration has changed laws and offered billions in tax incentives to lure the companies. Data centers, in particular, are starting to create a backlash in some areas, echoing broader national concerns about artificial intelligence. Secrecy about the deals has become a hot topic, too, along with debates about whether large industrial investments can change the trajectory of a state that has been outflanked by its peers for the past half century.
It’s a pivotal moment for the state, and economists, development leaders and others say it’s still too early to say how it will all play out. A lot can change between the time projects are announced and up and running. And how the state leverages the opportunities it has created will be the key to ending decades of economic malaise.
“Investment in Louisiana has grown by a magnitude almost overnight,” said GNO Inc. President and CEO Michael Hecht. “While this is an extraordinary opportunity, we now have to ensure that Louisiana residents get the jobs, and Louisiana firms get the business.”
### Jobs from different industries
For decades, Louisiana depended on oil and gas, agriculture and its other natural resources to power the state’s economy. But since the oil price collapse of the 1980s, the state has struggled to keep up with the rest of the nation across a range of economic and quality-of-life measures.
Between 2000 and 2025, Louisiana’s economy grew 50% more slowly than the country as a whole, and since 1970, its household earnings have remained stuck at 48th of the 50 states, running more than 30% below the national average, according to the Urban Land Institute.
It has backslid even as it has continued attracting big industry. Between 2015 and 2023, under Landry’s predecessors, Louisiana drew $90 billion in new capital investments, mostly LNG plants and petrochemical facilities tied to the state’s energy industry. But job growth remained flat during that period and the state lost 52,000 people, a Data Center report found.
“We’ve maintained our ability to attract oil and gas investments,” said retired LSU economist Jim Richardson. “But those industries don’t create the jobs they once did, in part because of automation and technology.”
That's one reason state leaders have focused on other areas. The Hyundai steel mill, which broke ground last week outside of Donaldsonville, promises between 1,200 and 1,300 permanent jobs at an annual salary of nearly $100,000. Site selector Didi Caldwell, of Global Location Strategies, says it is an example of advanced manufacturing, a sector that has a track record of creating new hubs of economic growth.
The prospects of other sectors are less clear. Gary Wagner, an economist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said that data centers, a new sector Landry introduced to the state two years ago, have a questionable track record of improving long-term economic prosperity. A few recent studies have shown the facilities can stimulate economic activity — and Meta’s Hyperion project in Richland Parish, which is drawing thousands of construction workers, is boosting local sales tax collections, funding teacher bonuses and attracting new businesses to the area.
But Wagner said that the economic literature on data centers suggests that "if there is a measurable impact on job growth and income over the long term, it is minimal."
In a rural area like Richland Parish, Bourgeois counters, even 1,000 jobs is a big deal.
"I think we lose sight of the significance of that number," she said.
### 'People with all skills'
At the SpaceX announcement, Landry seemed to acknowledge the shortcomings of the state’s historic reliance on oil and gas, framing the deal as a new kind of project.
“For generations, industry came to Louisiana not to build lasting prosperity but to extract wealth,” he said. “What Elon Musk and his team is offering Louisiana is different. They are offering us a permanent future and lasting prosperity.”
It’s hard to measure what that will look like in part because there's no comparison.
Starbase Louisiana aims to be the busiest spaceport on the planet, with a planned footprint that is 10 times the size of the company’s headquarters in Boca Chica, Texas. In December, the company reported a $13 billion economic impact and the creation of 24,000 direct and indirect jobs there since 2023. The numbers were not independently verified by the state.
SpaceX also has said it employs a little more than 4,000 people at the facility, 70% of whom are local. A recent report from Texas A&M, meanwhile, shows that property values have skyrocketed in the county, creating wealth for some while pricing others out.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at the Abbeville announcement last month that job numbers in Louisiana could well exceed 3,000.
“Sixty to eighty percent of our employees at Starbase Texas are local hires and we will repeat that here,” Shotwell said. “We need people with all skills — not just engineers, but welders, builders, technicians, restaurant workers.”
Rob Lalka, a professor focused on entrepreneurship at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, said that while 3,000 jobs is “not going to change our economy,” he predicts the ripple effect will be significant because of the workers and spinoff companies that follow Musk and SpaceX.
“What this will do is create an ecosystem that attracts the smartest rocket scientists in the world,” he said. “There will be opportunities for innovators and companies to work with them.”
### ‘Not the only option’
To attract th