New Orleans Metro ceases to be a major city, says the OMB

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

It went unnoticed by most of the local media, but a federal agency has downgraded New Orleans from a major city to little more than a large town, and that has major implications for future government funding, business relocation and economic development.

Basically, the New Orleans Metro was robbed of the Northshore! During his tenure two decades ago, former St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis controversially changed the moniker in advertisements of his parish from “New Orleans’ North Shore” to “Louisiana’s North Shore,” trying to break the mental metro association of the Causeway connection. It took 20 years, but a federal agency says the numbers now argue for exactly that.

Quite simply, the population of the New Orleans metropolitan area was reduced from 1,237,748 to 962,165 by the stroke of a pen, since less than a quarter of Northshore residents now commute to the South Shore for their jobs.

For the last 70 years, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has maintained a set of consistent statistical definitions for metropolitan regions of the United States to enhance the value of data provided by federal statistical agencies. The current rules are published in the Federal Register and are used to consistently define metro areas across the country.

Starting with data released for 2023, the metropolitan statistical area (MSA), anchored by New Orleans – officially, the New Orleans-Metairie MSA – no longer includes St. Tammany Parish. Following a 2020 update published by the federal government and implemented this year, the New Orleans-Metairie MSA now covers seven parishes: Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist and St. James. Additionally, a new Slidell-Mandeville-Covington MSA has been created, which consists only of St. Tammany Parish.

Why have these official definitions changed? As the New Orleans Data Center explained, “The short answer is that a smaller portion of workers who live in St. Tammany are commuting to work in Orleans, Jefferson, and other parishes on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. This smaller portion no longer meets the criteria for St. Tammany to be included in Metro New Orleans. For a longer answer, keep reading below where we run down the details. As a result of the change, the new official population of Metro New Orleans is lower than you might recall. According to the Census Bureau, the population of Metro New Orleans was 962,165 in 2023. If St. Tammany were included, the population under the old 8-parish definition would be 1,237,748 in 2023. The massive discrepancy between these two numbers is overwhelmingly driven by the official removal of St. Tammany’s resident population from the total rather than by population loss in the individual metro parishes. The bottom line is that, going forward, the official estimate will reflect a 7-parish region of under 1 million, not an 8-parish region of over 1.2 million. Without St. Tammany, basic measures of Metro New Orleans’ demographic and economic makeup will also change.”

The OMB had previously classified St. Tammany as an “outlying county” of the New Orleans-Metairie MSA. Its two urban areas around Mandeville-Covington and around Slidell now stand as geographically separate and distinct from the larger urban area on the south shore. Previously, more than 25 percent of St. Tammany residents who work commuted to the six “central counties” on the Southshore, meeting the criteria to be part of the New Orleans-Metairie MSA.

For the last major update in 2010, which used data collected from 2006-2010, 26.2 percent of St. Tammany’s workers were commuting to the Southshore. In the new estimates used for OMB’s latest major update in 2020, which use data collected from 2016-2020, this portion had fallen to 22.5 percent. The 25 percent commuting threshold is no longer met. Further, St. Tammany’s two urban areas have sufficient population to define the parish as a “central county” in a new MSA, deemed the Slidell-Mandeville-Covington MSA.

As the Data Center explained, “Because St. Tammany’s jobs have grown at an even faster pace than its population, the ratio of jobs to population has increased, from 232 jobs for every 1,000 residents in 1990 to 346 jobs for every 1,000 residents in 2023. The job-population ratio in St. Tammany remains lower than in Orleans and Jefferson (and Plaquemines, St. James and St. Charles). But unlike in St. Tammany, the jobs-to-population ratio in Orleans and Jefferson is lower than it was during the early 2000s, before Hurricane Katrina. Altogether, these measures track a relative shift in metro area jobs to St. Tammany Parish that has outpaced the shift in population, making it more likely for residents of St. Tammany to find jobs located in St. Tammany.”

“As a result of the MSA redefinition, Metro New Orleans no longer makes the cut for metros with a population greater than one million. We remain the second smallest metro to host an NFL team; but now, we join Green Bay as the only NFL host metro that does not eclipse one million residents. Likewise, St. Tammany is no longer a booming suburb but a small metro. Naively looking at these two MSAs, neither is as large or economically diverse on paper as it was before. While these “on paper” changes are distorted by the separation of St. Tammany into its own metro, the risk lies in the fact that naive data analysis is very common. For example, market analysts scanning national data for locations to make an investment might now fail to find a sufficient customer market or workforce when looking at metro-level data. Arguably, ranking metros has become something like a cottage industry, one that often converts thin data analysis into click bait. Savvy data users will recognize how removing St. Tammany, which was one fifth of the metro population, will affect static rankings and will put a kink in dynamic trends used to track prosperity and change in the region. The redefinition not only alters the statistical picture but also disrupts the narrative of a unified Southeast Louisiana region.”

Of course, the MSA redefinition creates a statistical division where none existed before. That makes creating a shared narrative to attract business, television and digital coverage, sporting events and arts organizations to the metro area even more difficult. A recent article in Verite News outlined how many major artists are actually bypassing the NOLA metro, and commuting patterns based on size of audience may play a factor.

The ability to travel between various regions in South Louisiana also may play a role. There is virtually no bus service and certainly no train or light rail to the Northshore. Equally, the proposed Amtrak service to Baton Rouge stands as years behind schedule. If regular transportation service up the river is created, those parishes might provide a short term population replacement. New Orleans may have lost the Northshore, but bringing the River Parishes into the metro area more actively could push the threshold over one million residents once more. Accomplishing that would entail easier transportation methods for employment and entertainment, which currently do not exist.

In the late 1990s, a proposal to build a maglev train from downtown New Orleans to Slidell and across the Gulf Coast had strong federal support. It died, just as previous proposals to have fast ferries from the Northshore equally came to naught. One wonders if the 25 percent threshold would have been maintained if those train or boat services had been carrying pedestrians without cars for the last 25 years.

This article originally published in the June 30, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.