Though it gets an A for effort in promoting economic development efforts, Louisiana once again ranks at the bottom of CNBC’s annual list of America’s Best States for Business.
The Bayou State ranked No. 44 on the list and is No. 7 on CNBC’s supplemental ranking of the ten worst states for business. Louisiana held the same spot in 2016.
Cited as reasons for Louisiana’s dismal rankings are competitiveness measures used in the study. According to CNBC, the state has one of the worst education systems in the nation and fared poorly on metrics like economy and quality of life. In both categories, Louisiana ranked No. 49. It scored just 1,054 points out of a possible 2,500.
Louisiana aggressively promotes its economic development efforts and generous business incentives—and for that, CNBC writes, the state gets an A for its efforts.
“But that grade might mean more if it didn’t come from a state with the third-worst education system in the nation,” it writes. “In metric after metric, Louisiana finishes near the bottom, proving that tax breaks and incentives alone are not enough to put a state on top.”
In other metrics, the state ranks 39th for infrastructure, 47th for technology and innovation, 40th in business friendliness and 31st in access to capital. But there are some bright spots for Louisiana: The state ranks No. 4 for the cost of doing business. And CNBC, in a separate article, lauded the state’s FastStart workforce training program, hailing it as an apprenticeship program that’s working.
CNBC ranks Washington as the best state for doing business.
In May, ‘Site Selection’ placed Louisiana among the Top 10 states in the nation for economic development initiatives.
