The Direction of Louisiana: Citizens and Small Business Owners Share This Perspective

We are living in tough times.

Despite living in an age when technological advances are great, some of the same problems are resurfacing as citizens and small business owners continue to do what's best for their families and their customers.

Those problems - economy, education, and infrastructure - are the most important issues affecting people in Louisiana.

It’s killing them, they haven’t seen times like this in a while," said NFIB state director Dawn McVea to Louisiana Radio Network. "It’s affecting everything; it’s just an unfortunate situation right now.”

McVea is commenting on a nationwide survey of small business owners who say inflation is their biggest concern, something she spoke about in this interview with Moon Griffon.

The poll also showed optimism is at its lowest point in the 48-year history of the survey as business owners aren't expecting conditions to improve over the next six months.

Here are a couple of other disturbing numbers regarding the lack of optimism among small business owners:

• 47% of owners reported job openings that could not be filled
• 40% of owners report that supply chain disruptions have had a significant impact on their business

 

Gas prices are still killing them and on top of that you still have labor shortages,” said McVea. “(And) you have folks who haven’t been able to get in what they would normally have on their shelves, so that has led to fewer sales.”

 

In a separate poll conducted by LSU Public Policy Research Lab, Louisiana citizens share that same pessimism about the direction of the state as 66% of adults say the state is heading in the wrong direction.

Some of the most pessimistic results we’ve seen on this survey since we started in 2004,” said LSU Manship School associate professor Doctor Michael Henderson to LRN as only 26% say the state is heading in the right direction. “This year we saw about a third mention transportation infrastructure, especially roads and highways, so a lot of discontent.”

 

Here are a couple of other disturbing numbers regarding the lack of optimism among Louisiana citizens:

• Concern about crime more than doubled from 10% last year to 24% this year.
• Confidence in state government to solve the problems dropped to 25%, the lowest point since 2004.

In summary, Dr. Henderson wraps up the pessimistic views about the direction of Louisiana in this quote:

We’ve seen a pretty steady erosion of confidence in state government to solve important problems since about 2010.