The State of Local Business in Louisiana, 2026 Edition

1. New Orleans has the most businesses; Slidell has the most per resident

New Orleans has the most businesses in 36 of the 50 industries, but Slidell has the most per resident in fourteen industries.

Counting heads, New Orleans leads everything except fourteen trades where Baton Rouge is larger (drywall, roofing, landscaping, hair salons, auto repair, physical therapy, painting, flooring, pool services, tire shops, mortgage brokers, child care centers, nail salons and pet grooming). Counting businesses per 10,000 residents, which is the better measure of how crowded a market feels, the picture flips: Slidell (St. Tammany Parish) leads fourteen industries, Lafayette nine, New Orleans six, Alexandria five, Monroe four, Baton Rouge and Houma three each, and Hammond, Lake Charles and Shreveport two apiece. New Orleans holds only law offices, restaurants, hotels, remodeling contractors, property management and bars, and its lead in hotels over Lake Charles, with its casino hotels, is a rounding-width one; Lake Charles takes tire shops and funeral homes; and Shreveport's two are painting and flooring. Baton Rouge is the least dense of the ten metros for plumbing and HVAC despite having 282 contractors.

Source: Census County Business Patterns 2023; population from ACS 2023.

2. Lafayette Parish is the densest business market in the state

Lafayette Parish packs 125 of these businesses per 10,000 residents, more than Orleans, Jefferson or East Baton Rouge.

Adding all 50 industries together, Lafayette Parish has 3,073 payroll establishments for 245,075 people, or 125.4 per 10,000. The state average is 77.6. The ten densest parishes are the regional hubs, and the same three trades drive almost every one of them: physicians' offices, law offices and restaurants are the top three in nine of the ten, and only in Orleans does a fourth trade break in, where 241 bars and lounges take third place behind law offices and restaurants. Lafayette Parish alone has 379 physicians' offices, 15.5 per 10,000, the highest in Louisiana; Orleans has 652 law offices, 17.3 per 10,000.

Ouachita, Caddo, Rapides, Calcasieu and Terrebonne each have one to seven industries withheld by the Census (movers, locksmiths, towing, mortgage brokers, bakeries and seafood markets among them), so their totals are slightly low. The four parishes with the most of these businesses (Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, Orleans, Lafayette) hold 42 percent of the state's establishments in these trades with 33 percent of its people.

3. Pool services, remodeling and roofing boomed, physicians' offices shrank

Pool services grew 57 percent in five years and retail bakeries 55, with counseling practices, remodeling and roofing contractors up 40 percent each, while physicians' offices lost one in seven.

Thirty-four of the 50 industries added establishments between 2018 and 2023, fifteen lost, and assisted living stayed at exactly 127. The net gain across all 50 was 1,504 businesses on a base of 34,343, about 4 percent, so the story is still churn between trades more than growth. Home trades, real estate and physical therapy grew; professional and medical offices shrank, and so did painting, moving and locksmiths (painting down 5 percent, movers 4, locksmiths 2, on Census counts that leave out the one-van businesses with no payroll). Mortgage brokers grew 19 percent (77 to 92), tire shops 15 percent and property management 12, while used car dealers fell 5 percent. Counseling and mental health practices grew 40 percent (334 to 469), optometrists 8 percent and title companies 5, while funeral homes fell 3 percent and self storage 9, the steepest fall in the index after physicians' offices. Retail bakeries grew 55 percent (58 to 90) and coffee shops 34 (756 to 1,014), while bars added 4 percent and child care centers 3, and pharmacies fell 5 percent, from 870 to 823. Nail salons grew 38 percent (388 to 537), pet grooming and boarding 31 percent, spas and massage 26 and trucking companies 17, while seafood markets barely moved, 96 to 97, the flattest line in the index after assisted living. Pool services, the fastest grower, went from 124 to 195 and grew in eight of the ten metros (Lake Charles and Monroe have ranges that straddle zero); St. Tammany Parish alone went from 7 to 19. Remodeling contractors with payroll went from 707 to 990 and grew in every metro, Houma fastest at 125 percent; physical therapy clinics went from 648 to 776 while Lafayette, the densest metro for the trade, stayed flat. Physicians' offices fell in all ten metros (New Orleans lost about 100, Lafayette 87, Shreveport 37). The Census counts offices with payroll, not doctors, so a practice absorbed into a hospital system stops being counted as its own office; that is our reading of the drop, not something the data states.

4. The Census goes quiet in rural Louisiana

The Census publishes no count for more than half of the parish-and-industry cells in Louisiana, and for every one of the 50 in East Carroll Parish.

The Census withholds any cell with fewer than three establishments. In 2023 that hid 1,677 of the 3,200 parish-by-industry cells (52 percent). Only six parishes have all 50 industries published (East Baton Rouge, Orleans, Bossier, Lafayette, St. Tammany, Jefferson). The 20 parishes under 20,000 residents account for 862 of the withheld cells, and 49 parishes with a combined 1,373,692 people have ten or more industries hidden. Withholding follows the trade too: locksmiths are hidden in 56 parishes, movers in 55, bakeries in 53, mortgage brokers and assisted living in 51 each, seafood markets and spas in 49 each, flooring, pet grooming and towing in 48 each, used car dealers in 47, roofing in 46, counseling, pool services and title companies in 45 each, drywall and painting in 44 each, optometrists in 43, self storage in 42, nail salons in 41, pest control and fitness in 40 each, while restaurants and insurance agencies are hidden in only six. A withheld 2018 cell also turns a trend into a range: 247 of the 500 metro trends and 143 parish trends are shown as ranges rather than a single number, and sixteen metro cells (Alexandria roofing, flooring, movers, mortgage brokers, bakeries, pet grooming and seafood markets; Hammond assisted living, movers, locksmiths, bakeries and seafood markets; Houma movers; Lake Charles locksmiths; Monroe mortgage brokers and bakeries) have no 2023 count at all. For rural coverage this means the index is reliable for the six fully published parishes and for the bigger trades, and a rural roofer, locksmith or care home should expect a "fewer than 3" answer rather than a number.

5. Supply against demand: where the searches are thin

Baton Rouge has eight restaurants for every 1,000 monthly searches for "restaurants baton rouge" and 566 accounting firms for every 1,000 searches for "cpa baton rouge".

This table divides each metro's establishment count by the monthly Google searches for the industry's head term (the top city pattern in each playbook's keyword section) and shows businesses per 1,000 searches. A low number means demand for the head term is deep relative to the number of businesses; a high number means most businesses cannot be living off that search and are winning work from "near me" searches, referrals or brand. Seafood markets, hotels, massage businesses, bakeries, movers and locksmiths have the deepest head-term demand of all, with a dozen or fewer businesses per 1,000 searches in every metro, because "crawfish {city}", "hotel {city}", "massage {city}", "bakery {city}", "movers {city}" and "locksmith {city}" are among the few city terms that clear 1,000 a month while the Census counts only 97 seafood markets, 264 spas and 90 bakeries. The Census counts payroll employers only, so movers and locksmiths, two trades full of one-van operators, look smaller in these counts than their map packs do. Restaurants, assisted living (searched as "nursing home"), roofing and pest control come next. "Hotel {city}" is the largest city term in the index outside restaurants, and there are only six to eight hotels per 1,000 searches for it in every one of the four metros. Accounting, insurance, law, electricians and remodelers (searched as "general contractor") have the thinnest, with several hundred businesses per 1,000 searches, and the three new home trades are thinner still: "flooring company {city}" and "pool service {city}" report under 100 searches a month everywhere and "painter {city}" does in three of the four metros, so Baton Rouge shows 1,833 painters and 1,075 pool companies per 1,000 searches, and the trade is won on "near me" instead. Used car dealers, tire shops and tow companies split the same way: they sit near the deep end, at 18, 88 and 31 per 1,000 in New Orleans, while property management and mortgage brokers sit at the thin end, 526 property managers per 1,000 searches for "property management new orleans" and 400 mortgage brokers per 1,000 in Shreveport, where the term reports under 50 searches a month. Funeral homes, self storage, optometrists and title companies run the same range: funeral homes have the deepest head-term demand of the four, 26 in New Orleans down to 7 in Shreveport, because "funeral home {city}" clears 1,000 searches a month in all four metros; self storage and optometrists sit in the middle; and title companies are thin everywhere, 338 offices per 1,000 searches for "title company new orleans" and 318 in Lafayette. Counseling has no Lafayette figure at all, because "therapist lafayette la" is blank while the plain form is shared with Lafayette, Indiana. Pharmacies, child care centers, coffee shops, bakeries and bars stretch the table at both ends: retail bakeries are the deepest row of those five, five businesses per 1,000 searches in New Orleans and ten in Shreveport, because "bakery {city}" runs 500 to 1,000 a month or more in all four metros while the state has only 90 bakeries with payroll; bars and coffee shops sit in the deep half too, 56 and 72 per 1,000 in New Orleans; and pharmacies and child care centers land in the middle, 308 and 282. Bars have no Shreveport figure, because "bar shreveport" is blank even though the sports bar variant reports volume there. Nail salons, spas and massage, pet grooming, seafood markets and trucking companies reach deeper still: seafood markets carry the two deepest cells on the table, two businesses per 1,000 searches in Lafayette and three in Shreveport, because "crawfish {city}" runs 1,000 to 5,000 a month or more in all four metros while the state has only 97 markets with payroll and the boil places that compete with them are counted as restaurants; spas and massage sit just behind at seven to eleven; nail salons and pet grooming run in the middle, 69 and 90 per 1,000 in New Orleans; and trucking companies have almost no city demand to divide by. Physicians are the extreme: "doctor {city}" is so small that the figure is meaningless, because that trade is searched as "urgent care {city}", which runs 4 to 48 times higher in the three metros where both terms report a figure. Physical therapy joins chiropractors and drywall as trades whose head term Google reports nothing for: its city terms carried volume through 2023 and have read zero since. Trucking comes close to joining them: only "trucking company baton rouge" reports a figure, 100 to 500 a month, which is why three of its four cells are blank and the fourth reads 507 carriers per 1,000 searches for "trucking company baton rouge". The Lafayette figures use the "lafayette la" form of each term, because the plain form is shared with Lafayette, Indiana and elsewhere.

Each cell: businesses per 1,000 monthly searches (search volume band). Google Ads data via DataForSEO. Establishments: Census CBP 2023.

6. One in five map listings is unclaimed

Across 7,809 real Louisiana competitors in the map pack, one in five listings is unclaimed and one in four has no website.

We pulled the top 20 Google Maps results for the main search in each industry in all ten metros: 9,816 listings after dropping 14 ad rows (Google returns short lists for the thinnest trades, 160 rows in all for "locksmith", 167 for "seafood market", where Monroe returned six and Lake Charles seven, 181 for "towing" and 153 for "funeral home", where the small metros run short and Slidell returned four listings). Filtering each pack to the primary categories that actually compete for the search removed 2,007 off-category rows (20 percent) and left 7,809 real competitors. Of those, 6,127 (78 percent) are claimed, 5,698 (73 percent) have a website, 796 (10 percent) have no reviews, and the median listing has 36 reviews. "Movers" is one of the emptiest searches in the series, behind only drywall, locksmiths and pool service: in the small metros the pack is mostly trucking companies (12 of Houma's 19 rows and 12 of Monroe's 20, and 59 of the 104 excluded "movers" listings statewide), so Houma has three real movers and Monroe four. Used cars is the opposite case, 192 of its 200 rows being real dealers, yet it is one of only five trades whose median rating sits under 4.5 (4.4, with hotels at 3.9, pharmacies at 4.0, trucking companies at 4.3 and property management at 4.25). Self storage is one of the tidiest and most corporate packs in the index: only four of its 200 listings are off-category, Public Storage, Extra Space, U-Haul and CubeSmart hold 35 of the 196 real competitors, and the median facility carries 66 reviews. Pharmacy packs belong to the chains, 121 of the 180 real competitors, and the chains are the disliked half, a median 3.6 rating against 4.6 for the independents, which is what leaves the trade at 4.0 overall. Trucking is the least tended map in the series: only 72 of its 185 real competitors are claimed and 77 have a website, the median carrier has four reviews and 54 have none at all. Child care is the next thinnest on websites after trucking: 87 of its 179 listings have one, 49 percent, and in Hammond only three of seventeen do. The bar varies enormously by trade: the median hotel in a pack has 559 reviews, the median restaurant 408, the median dentist 261.5, the median coffee shop 215, the median seafood market 201.5, the median nail salon 177, the median veterinary clinic 156.5, the median tire shop 123, the median bakery 106.5, the median bar 104 and the median optometrist 84, but the median accountant has 4, the median carrier 4, the median home health agency 5, the median child care center 7, the median painter 8, the median drywall contractor 8 and the median counseling practice 9. Physicians' packs are the least claimed after trucking (53 percent unclaimed), largely individual-doctor listings Google created on its own. By metro, Shreveport has the cleanest packs (12 percent off-category, 83 percent claimed) and Houma the messiest (26 percent off-category, 67 percent claimed), though Hammond throws out a larger share of its rows than Houma does, 27 percent.

Medians exclude listings with no reviews. Source: Google Maps top 20 results per metro, September 2026, real competitors only.

7. One category usually wins, and the loser picked the vague one

In 41 of 50 industries a single primary category holds more than 60 percent of the real pack slots, and the nine exceptions are the trades where the searcher's word is not a Google category.

Chiropractor, Pest Control Service, Roofing Contractor, Property Management Company, Title Company and Nail Salon are used by 100 percent of real competitors; Funeral Home by 99 percent; Towing Service, Auto Body Shop and Home Health Care Service by 98 percent; Hotel, Electrician and Plumber by about 95 percent; Self-Storage Facility by 92 percent; and Locksmith by 92 percent once the key-cutting kiosks are set aside. The exceptions are accounting (Accountant 45 percent, split with Tax Preparation Service and Certified Public Accountant), assisted living (nursing homes take 42 of 141 slots for an "assisted living" search), restaurants (plain Restaurant holds 32 percent, but cuisine categories hold 19 of the 26 top-three slots), law (Attorney 38 percent, with Personal Injury Attorney on 46 listings), physicians (Doctor and Medical Clinic tie at 42 each, but 31 of the 42 "Doctor" listings are unclaimed and 23 have no reviews, so the vaguer category is the one nobody is tending) and remodeling (General Contractor 41 percent, split with Construction Company and plain Contractor, while Remodeler, the category named for the trade, is primary on only 10 of 161), pool services (Pool Cleaning Service 46 percent, Swimming Pool Contractor 29 and Swimming Pool Repair Service 26, one category per buyer, because "pool service" is not a category and neither is "pool maintenance" or "pool builder"), counseling (Counselor 53 percent, with Mental health service on 25 listings, Psychologist on 14 and Family counselor on 12, because "therapist" is not a category and the license decides which of the four an owner picks) and spas and massage (Massage therapist 49 percent, with Massage spa on 60 of 172, Spa on 13 and Day spa on six, because Google splits one trade into six categories and the sign on the door decides which an owner takes). The wrong-category patterns repeat across metros: locksmith packs are half key-cutting kiosks, since KeyMe, Minute Key and the Home Depot key centers take 84 of the 160 rows Google returned for "locksmith", 12 of the 20 in Shreveport, and nine of them call themselves "Locksmith", leaving 63 real locksmiths, and a real locksmith nonetheless takes the top spot in eight of the ten metros; "painter" packs lose two-fifths of their rows (82 of 200), mostly artists, art galleries, paint stores and paint-and-sip studios, plus general contractors, body shops and handymen; bare Contractor and General Contractor listings pad the flooring packs in Houma and Lake Charles; three pool companies list themselves as "Swimming Pool", the category for a pool you can visit; the property management pack is half real estate firms, 96 of its 200 rows thrown out and 48 of those plain Real estate agency, with nine listings carrying an apartment complex or homeowners' association category, five of them under Property management company; Mortgage lender beats Mortgage broker 126 to 70 in the mortgage packs, so the category named for the trade is not the one that wins, and 21 of those 198 listings carry a loan officer's NMLS number in the listing name, mostly individuals rather than firms; three marine towing firms in the port cities, two in Houma and one in Lake Charles, sit in the "towing" packs and are excluded by name, one of them under Towing service itself; the title company packs throw out 52 of their 192 rows, 10 of them Notary public and 19 of them real title firms filed under nine other primaries, most often Legal services, then Law firm, Notary public, Insurance agency or Real estate attorney; opticians take 15 of the 25 rows excluded from the optometrist packs and ophthalmologists hold 11 of the 175 that stay, because Google treats the dispensary, the eye exam and the surgeon as three businesses; massage therapists and physical therapy clinics take 35 of the 54 rows thrown out of the packs pulled for "therapist", the word both trades use; not one mobile groomer appears in the pet grooming packs, though "mobile dog grooming near me" runs above 5,000 searches a month nationally and the city form registers in eight of the ten metros, because Google has no mobile grooming category and a van has to lead with Pet groomer and set a service area; the seafood packs throw out 50 of their 167 rows, 18 grocers and 15 restaurants and cafes among them, because Google has no category for a boiled seafood counter and a crawfish place with tables sits under Seafood restaurant (231,955 listings nationally) instead; Transportation service is 1,509,526 listings nationally against 263,762 for Trucking company, but it is a catch-all shared with limos and medical transport and only seven of 185 carriers lead with it; the coffee and bar packs each lose more than two-fifths of their rows, 85 of 200 for "coffee shop" to bakeries, donut shops, restaurants, a coworking space and a city hall, and 86 of 200 for "bar", 66 of those being places that serve drinks first but file under a food category, 17 as plain Restaurant and 12 as American; donut shops hold a fifth of the bakery packs, 20 of the 138 real competitors carrying the Donuts primary and 25 with donut or doughnut in the name; the daycare packs are unusually clean and still throw out a dog day care center, a kennel and a children's museum; HVAC and plumbing companies set Electrician as primary and bring thousands of reviews into the electrician pack (AccuTemp, 6,777 in Baton Rouge); Firestone ranks first in New Orleans and Baton Rouge for "auto repair" under Tire Shop; 41 of the 200 auto body listings pulled sit under Auto Repair Shop, a dozen of them body shops by name; an insulation contractor holds roofing slots in two metros; 14 painters with "drywall" in their name sit under Painter; building-supply stores use contractor categories to reach the drywall pack; pressure washers, dry cleaners, laundries and bare "Cleaners" listings take 38 of the 200 house-cleaning slots; home builders with no remodeling category rank for "remodeling contractor"; and Google simply has no category for exterminator, termite, mosquito, lawn mowing, business insurance, real estate broker, boutique hotel, maid service, collision repair, hail repair, painting contractor, local mover, automotive locksmith or pool builder, so owners searching for one pick something adjacent.

8. New Orleans in one chart: half the city's businesses in ten neighborhoods

Half of New Orleans' licensed businesses in these 50 trades sit in ten of its 72 neighborhoods, and the Central Business District alone holds 1,096.

The New Orleans picture comes from a different source: city occupational licenses matched to the 50 industries and to the 72 official neighborhoods (7,556 of 37,586 license rows matched one of the 50 industries; 6,976 of those carried usable coordinates and 6,975 fell inside a neighborhood boundary, as of 2026-09-02, the day the license list was pulled). The Central Business District has 1,096 licensed businesses, the French Quarter 595, Mid-City 498, Central City 286 and the Lower Garden District 261; the top ten neighborhoods hold 52 percent of the total. Per resident the CBD is off the scale at 2,519 businesses per 10,000, with the French Quarter at 1,689, Viavant-Venetian Isles at 1,084 and the Marigny at 685. Restaurants are 1,710 of the 6,975 licenses (25 percent), then bars and lounges (643, of which 190 are in the French Quarter, which is what lifts the Quarter above Mid-City into second place), law offices (482, of which 280 are in the CBD), hair salons (462, led by Mid-City with 46) and hotels (433, of which 178 are in the CBD and 60 in the French Quarter). Physicians cluster in Touro (56), around the hospitals. Viavant-Venetian Isles is the city's truck yard: 28 of the 49 towing licenses and 10 of the 54 trucking licenses sit there, and only law offices in the Central Business District are as concentrated. Bars, child care centers, bakeries, coffee shops and pharmacies hold 1,103 licenses between them, well over half of those bars (643), then child care centers (152), bakeries (119), coffee shops (95) and pharmacies (94). Spas and massage, nail salons, trucking companies, pet grooming and seafood markets hold 494, led by spas and massage (195) and nail salons (187), then trucking companies (54), pet grooming (37) and seafood markets (21). Two neighborhoods, Florida Development and Iberville, have no licensed business in any of the 50 trades; no assisted living or mortgage broker license matched at all, and the city's license types have no remodeling, moving or pool category, so those trades have no neighborhood figures. License counts include businesses without payroll, so they run higher than the Census (6,975 licenses against 3,600 Census establishments for Orleans Parish) and the two sources should not be compared cell by cell.

9. Method note and how to cite

Every number on this page can be recomputed from public data and one keyword pull.

Business counts are Census County Business Patterns, 2023 (NAICS 2017 codes), compared with 2018; metros are 2023 CBSA definitions with the prior year summed from the same parishes; population is ACS 2023 five-year. Cells with fewer than three establishments are withheld by the Census and excluded from ranks. Search volumes are US monthly Google Ads figures pulled 2026-09-02 through DataForSEO; the page shows bands (under 50, 50 to 100, 100 to 500, 500 to 1,000, 1,000 to 5,000, 5,000 plus) and never sums word-order variants. For Lafayette, Monroe, Alexandria and Hammond, which share names with cities in other states, the "la" form of each term is used. Map packs are the top 20 Google Maps results for the industry's first seed term at each metro's center, September 2026; ad rows without a place ID are dropped, and statistics cover only listings whose primary category competes for the search, using the category lists stated in each industry playbook. New Orleans neighborhood counts are city occupational licenses as of 2026-09-08. Census figures carry no sampling error but do exclude businesses without employees; search volumes are rounded by Google.

Credit search volumes as "Google Ads data via DataForSEO" and business counts as "US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023." Journalists may reuse any table with that credit; for parish or metro figures not on this page, the full dataset is on the place pages.