It's party time again in New Orleans.

Mardi Gras, the city's signature event, has been gradually coming back since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Spirits are higher now that the Saints won their first Super Bowl. And New Orleans is even surviving the recession better than the country as a whole because it isn't as heavily tied to manufacturing and construction industries

In some ways, things are looking up. But the city is far from fully recovered from Katrina, the storm that flooded 80 percent of New Orleans when levees that had protected the city for years finally gave way. The hurricane and its aftermath were linked to 1,836 deaths in Louisiana, many in and around the city.

With a happy spotlight back on New Orleans, Portfolio.com took a fresh look at the economic life of the Crescent City. Here's what we found:

Living

Yes, people are returning or moving in to New Orleans. One year after Katrina, less than half of the homes in the city had active addresses (receiving mail). But that number climbed to 76 percent as of last August, according to the Brookings Institution, which tracks annual stats for New Orleans since Katrina.

But almost 66,000 homes remained unoccupied as of last August, and affordable housing continues to be a challenge. A loss of housing drove up rents, making it hard for service workers to find affordable places to live. The Brookings Institution reports that typical rent for an efficiency apartment is $733 a month, and that's not affordable for a person who works in food preparation, retail, or lower-rung health care jobs.

Clearly the population isn't what it once was. But there's even disagreement over how many people live in New Orleans now. A recent Tulane University study claimed that Census data actually inflated the number of people living in the city (official tally is almost 337,000). Dead people were counted in the census, according to the Tulane study. Tulane's population count: There are just under 255,000 residents, compared with 462,000 before Katrina.

Tourism and Mardi Gras

How important is Mardi Gras? A 2000 study by University of New Orleans estimated a $1.06 billion economic impact. Direct tax revenue for city of New Orleans: $20.5 million (direct cost is $4.6 million). The local tourism folks still use the $1 billion estimate, though attendance hasn't returned to pre-Katrina levels. More than 1 million people visited Mardi Gras in 2005 just months before the storm. Last year's attendance was somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million. In 2004, before Katrina, more than 10 million visitors came to New Orleans. In 2008, 7.6 million people visited the city.

Tourism employed 85,000 people before Katrina, the tourism group says. Last year that figure for the metro area was under 70,000, government figures show.

The Saints definitely put New Orleans back in the national spotlight after its win over the Indianapolis Colts at this year's Super Bowl. City officials, owners of more than 1,000 restaurants, and operators of almost 35,000 hotel rooms hope that win translates into pre-Katrina levels of spending.

Economic Notes

Federal disaster commitments have helped spur economic activity. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pumped billions of dollars into New Orleans, committing almost $8 billion as of last year.

The New Orleans metro area economy was faring better than the rest of the country as of last August. While manufacturing and construction job losses were severe across the nation, those industries shed relatively few jobs in the New Orleans area, Brookings reported. The biggest local industries, leisure and hospitality and trade, transportation, and utilities were down around 1 percent, while jobs in government, education, and health services rose.

And even though the local economy is faring better than the national economy, lower consumer spending hurt government revenue collections, and the Port of New Orleans, a major employer, saw a sharp drop in cargo.