Louisiana Economic Development

Louisiana Economic Development (LED) is charged with executing the most far-reaching objective of any Louisiana state government agency: creating a more vibrant Louisiana economy. To achieve this objective, LED provides aggressive leadership in two broad areas of activity: product development and business development. Product development activities are focused on increasing Louisiana’s overall competitiveness (e.g., developing competitive business tax and/or incentives policies, optimizing capital and infrastructure investments, improving workforce delivery) to create a more attractive environment for business investment. These efforts strengthen Louisiana’s competitive position in its traditional industry sectors and position the state to succeed in new growth sectors. Business development includes the many traditional economic development activities related to marketing, business recruitment, and business retention and expansion -- activities which are focused on increasing Louisiana’s market share of jobs in industries for which the state is already competitive. Through consistent, aggressive, professional project leadership and support, LED’s business development efforts grow the Louisiana economy by directly fostering new investment by private sector employers. LED’s vision is to reposition Louisiana as the next great American state for business investment, quality of life, and economic opportunity. In pursuit of this vision, LED recently has developed significant new capabilities in product development and has expanded and improved its capabilities in business retention, expansion, and attraction. By optimizing these and other efforts, we expect to become one of the top state economic development agencies in the country over the next two years. LED’s goal is to hit a long-run job creation rate of 40,000 new direct and indirect jobs per year in order to lead the South and nation overall in terms of percentage job growth over the next two decades.