Many or all companies we feature compensate us. Compensation and editorial
research influence how products appear on a page.
Personal Finance Reports

The Best 100 Towns in Louisiana For Starting a Small Business

Published Mar 13, 2018
4-min read
Mike Brown Author Photo
Written by Mike Brown
Mike Brown Author Photo
Written by Mike Brown

Expertise:

Mike Brown uses data from surveys and publicly-available resources to identify emerging personal finance trends and tell unique stories. Mike’s work, featured in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, provides consumers with a personal finance measuring stick to make informed financial decisions.

Learn more about Mike Brown

A small business in Lafayette, Louisiana, a community that ranked as the 24th best place in the state to start a small business.

The state of Louisiana is known for many things. 

Its vast ​swathes of marshes and swamplands, home to large numbers of alligators, provide an instantly recognizable geographic landscape. The state’s largest city of New Orleans is a place steeped in history and is home to the biggest party of the year, Mardi Gras. The blend of both Creole and Cajun lifestyles in the Bayou State gives the state an cultural identity that can be matched by few other states.

But, there is something else about Louisiana that few people know about: the state’s top-notch small business environment. 

In 2014, Thumbtack, an online service that matches customers with local professionals, rated Louisiana as the best state in the Union for starting a small business. More recently, Thumbtack gave the Bayou State an A+ rating for its small business friendliness.  

Following up on this recognition by Thumbtack, LendEDU has decided to take the evaluation of Louisiana’s small business environment one step further.

With the help of a licensed dataset, we analyzed hundreds of Louisiana towns and cities based on each community’s conduciveness towards starting a small business. ​

Using the following three parameters, each and every Louisiana community was given a score that represented how friendly that place was for small businesses:

  1. Population Score (20% of the final score)
  2. Income Score (40% of the final score)
  3. Expenses Score (40% of the final score)​

All of the above parameters included a few sub-metrics that were used to calculate the total score for each parameter. Later, each Louisiana community’s three parameter scores were added together to get the final score. This entire process is explained in more detail in the methodology at the bottom of the report.

Keep reading to find out which 100 Louisiana towns and cities were recognized by LendEDU as the best places in the state for starting a small business.

Best 100 Towns in Louisiana for Small Businesses

Methodology

All of the data that was featured in this report was licensed by LendEDU from Onboard Informatics. Onboard Informatics’ dataset features many stand alone statistics that were used in this report, including population figures, tax data, population projection figures, and income projection figures. In total, nearly 500 Louisiana towns and cities were analyzed for this study. An arbitrary population cutoff was set at 4,000, which means any community with a population below that number was eliminated from further analysis. 

The following three parameters and their respective sub-metrics were used to evaluate each and every Louisiana town and city based on their conduciveness towards small businesses. ​

1. Population Score (Weight – 20%, Maximum Point Total – 20 points)

  • Daytime Population Score – The difference in the normal population and the population that is present during standard working day hours (Weight – 10%, Maximum Point Total – 10 points)
  • Population Growth Score – Forecasted population growth over the next five years (Weight – 10%, Maximum Point Total – 10 points)

2. Income Score (Weight – 40%, Maximum Point Total – 40 points)

  • Disposable Income Score – The average disposable income available to residents (Weight – 20%, Maximum Point Total – 20 points)
  • Income Growth Score – Forecasted income growth over the next five years (Weight – 20%, Maximum Point Total – 20 points)

3. Expenses Score (Weight – 40%, Maximum Point Total – 40 points)

  • Property Tax Score – Property tax rates (Weight – 8%, Maximum Point Total – 8 points)
  • Sales Tax Score –  Sales tax rate (Weight – 8%, Maximum Point Total – 8 points)
  • Utilities Score – Average cost of utilities (Weight – 8%, Maximum Point Total – 8 points)
  • Burglary Score – Rate of burglaries compared to the national average (Weight – 8%, Maximum Point Total – 8 points)
  • Property Crime Score – Rate of property crimes compared to the national average (Weight – 8%, Maximum Point Total – 8 points)

Each Louisiana town and city’s respective sub-metric score for a specific sub-metric was ranked against all other respective town’s sub-metric scores in the same sub-metric on a percent scale from 0 to 100. This was done for each sub-metric. Later, each individual percent rank was multiplied by its weight to produce the point total. All of a given community’s sub-metric scores in a specific parameter were added together to get the total parameter score. All three total parameter scores were then summed together to get the final score. Towns and cities in Louisiana with a greater final score were ranked higher on the list and vice-versa. Having a high score means that the city is generally a good place for small businesses owners in which they may have to take out less small business loans and can start profiting faster than other cities.

See more of LendEDU’s Research