Moving to New Orleans

Health care & bioscience

Ochsner Health, LCMC Health, University Medical Center New Orleans, Children's Hospital New Orleans, Tulane Medical Center, the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System, the New Orleans BioInnovation Center

Ochsner is the largest private employer in Louisiana and the two systems between them define both the job market and the insurance-network map. The downtown biomedical district built around University Medical Center and the VA hospital is the city's most deliberate attempt to grow an industry that is not tourism.

Port, logistics & maritime

Port of New Orleans, Port of South Louisiana, Bollinger Shipyards, Associated Terminals, the river pilots' associations, Coast Guard Sector New Orleans

The reason the city exists. Between the deep-water port and the barge traffic on the lower Mississippi, the river corridor moves an enormous share of American grain and petrochemicals — a steady, unglamorous, well-paid employment base that is largely invisible to visitors.

Tourism, hospitality & events

The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the Caesars Superdome, the hotel groups along Canal and Poydras, Commander's Palace and the independent restaurant sector, the Carnival and festival economy

The largest employer of people in the city and the most cyclical. Wages in the sector are low and hours are seasonal, but the festival calendar — Carnival, Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, Essence — is also what makes a lot of the rest of the economy work.

Energy & offshore services

The offshore Gulf support sector, Entergy, Chevron and Shell regional operations, the Port Fourchon supply chain south of the city

New Orleans is the onshore office for a great deal of Gulf of Mexico oil and gas activity — engineering, logistics, marine services and law — even though the rigs themselves are a long way away. Hiring tracks the oil price, so it is the most cyclical white-collar sector here.

Aerospace & advanced manufacturing

NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Textron Systems, Blade Dynamics legacy

Michoud, in New Orleans East, is where the core stages of NASA's Space Launch System are built — a 43-acre building on the Intracoastal Waterway that has been assembling rockets since Saturn V. Employment there rises and falls with federal programme decisions, so check the current manifest before treating it as a reason to move.

Higher education, film & culture

Tulane University, Loyola University New Orleans, Xavier University of Louisiana, the University of New Orleans, Dillard University, the Louisiana film tax credit production sector

Five universities in a city this size, including Xavier — which sends more Black students to medical school than any other institution in the country. The film industry that earned the state the 'Hollywood South' label runs on a capped transferable tax credit that the legislature has repeatedly rewritten, so treat production volume as a policy variable rather than a fixture.

Neighborhood · Upriver from downtown, along St. Charles Avenue

The nineteenth-century American quarter of mansions, live oaks and cast iron, threaded by the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, which has run on St. Charles since 1835.

Local tip: Ride the St. Charles line end to end for the price of a fare rather than paying for a tour — it is a working commuter route, not a heritage ride. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 and Magazine Street's six miles of independent shops are the walk to pair it with.

Nightlife · Downriver from the French Quarter

Creole cottages in improbable colours on the high ground of the natural levee, with Frenchmen Street's live music strip at the upriver end and Crescent Park's riverfront walk at the other.

Local tip: Frenchmen Street is where locals send you instead of Bourbon Street, and the honest version is that it is now half tourists too — but the music is real and the cover charges are small. Go on a weeknight. The Rusty Rainbow bridge into Crescent Park is the best free view of the river in the city.

Nature · Mid-City, toward the lake

One of the largest urban parks in the country, holding the world's biggest stand of mature live oaks, the New Orleans Museum of Art, a sculpture garden and a 1900s wooden carousel, with a slow bayou running out of it toward the old Creole faubourgs.

Local tip: Couturie Forest inside the park contains Laborde Mountain, at about 43 feet the highest natural point in the city — a joke and a genuinely useful thing to understand about local topography. Bayou St. John on a Sunday afternoon is where the city goes to sit down.

Landmark · The original city, on the river

Thirteen blocks by six of Spanish colonial architecture built after the fires of 1788 and 1794, still a residential neighbourhood as well as the most visited few streets in the American South.

Local tip: The Quarter before 9am is a different and much better place — the Café du Monde queue is short, the streets are being washed, and Royal and Chartres are quiet. Bourbon Street is four blocks of that; the other ninety blocks are not it.

Neighborhood · Across the river, reached by ferry

A small, intact nineteenth-century village on the West Bank, on some of the highest ground in the parish, with a passenger ferry to the foot of Canal Street that takes about ten minutes.

Local tip: The ferry is the cheapest and best boat ride in Louisiana and it is a commuter service, not an excursion. Point houses are noticeably cheaper than the equivalent stock on the East Bank for the same age and detail, and the flood history is better.

Culture · Just downriver and lakeside of the Quarter

One of the oldest Black neighbourhoods in the United States, where Congo Square's Sunday gatherings fed directly into the invention of jazz, with St. Roch Market and the Backstreet Cultural Museum nearby.

Local tip: Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park still hosts drum circles on Sunday afternoons and anyone may stand in the ring. Second line parades run through here most Sundays from late summer to spring — the routes are published and following one on foot is the single best introduction to the city.