Why is Louisiana losing population compared to other red states?

[Del Tachi]

Compared to other Southern states, the cost of living in Louisiana is quite high (insurance + taxes, really), job prospects are pretty poor, and state law still hasn't caught up with more business-friendly reforms that were pushed in states like TX/FL in the 1970s-1990s

[Del Tachi]

Compared to other Southern states, the cost of living in Louisiana is quite high (insurance + taxes, really), job prospects are pretty poor, and state law still hasn't caught up with more business-friendly reforms that were pushed in states like TX/FL in the 1970s-1990s

I’ll sound like a broken record, but this is also strongly influenced by climate change. Insurance companies are full believers in it and charge people accordingly. In fact some have stopped offering coverage completely in places like southern Louisiana.

Even if Republicans continue to remain in denial about climate change, insurance companies literally can't afford to do so. So Republicans will be forced to choose between abandoning uninsurable areas or using the power of the government to force private companies to write money-losing policies (or get the government in the insurance business to write money-losing policies).

The problem is FEMA's new Risk Rating 2.0, which re-calculated flood risk for all U.S. properties in 2021 and sent insurance rates skyrocketing in South Louisiana and other coastal areas.  The new rating system incorporates unproven climate change models that predict more damaging storms and sea level rise, while ignoring mitigation measures implemented by state and local governments (like improved levee systems and updated building codes.)

The use of the new risk model is being litigated by ten states and 43 Louisiana parishes.

[Del Tachi]

New Orleans is not the only city that floods.  New York, Charleston, Miami, Norfolk, and even many inland cities (i.e., Omaha) are at higher annual risk of flooding than New Orleans. 

A Category 4 hurricane hit New Orleans in 2021 and the city didn't flood. 

[Del Tachi]

Prone to frequent natural disasters. No pleasant weather/scenery drawing retirees or second home buyers or remote work types.

I'm surprised that New Orleans hasn't marketed itself as a center of culture and urban life in the South although there aren't many companies with offices in New Orleans so it would be harder to do so.

Actually, they have. Quite a bit. Try googling "New Orleans" along with such words as "culture" and "urban" and "South." The people of New Orleans are not shy about talking about how great (they say) their city is. And the marketing for NOLA has been pretty successful, considering how many people (mistakenly) believe the city is the home of Cajun food. New Orleans is still one the more famous tourist cities in the US, and the city continues to host a disproportionate number of super bowls, conventions, and other such events for a metro of its size.

But, the place probably has nowhere to go now but down.

Indeed.  New Orleans get 20M visitors per year, with about 6M-8M of that being in the four weeks leading up to Mardi Gras (it's more than a single day!)  That gives New Orleans about the same number of annual visitors as San Francisco (22M) or Boston (19M) despite being a much smaller city with way less business activity.

[Del Tachi]

Does climate change have any impact on car insurance rates? Louisiana has some of the highest.

Marginally.  Your vehicle is more likely to get flooded or damaged in a storm down here.  But the one thing states with high auto insurance rates have in common is this:  lots of uninsured drivers.

[Del Tachi]

Hmmm... for a very long time in the 18th and 19th centuries, New Orleans was the only large city in the South.  However, it basically didn't participate in the post-WWII Southern boom at all, so the state has taken on much more of a Rust Belt character than the rest of the South.  New Orleans has a slightly lower population now than it did in 1920!  Meanwhile, Houston popped up seemingly out of nowhere and overtook New Orleans by 5X even at the metro area scale, which includes the suburban areas of NOLA that actually have grown over time.

In theory, New Orleans should be one of the largest cities in the country, and it used to be one.  The big question is what went wrong?

That can be answered with one word.

Katrina

Eh, it's more complicated than that:

New Orleans was never destined to become a Sun Belt "megacity" because its geography severely limits the potential for sprawl.  The city lies on what was until very recently a malarial swamp and is surrounded by water on all sides.  Developable land is a rarity here, which makes auto-dependent exurban development quite a bit more unprofitable than in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, etc. (it does support better density than most cities our size, though)

The decline of New Orleans also has a lot to do with the international oil glut of the 1980s and how it hurt Louisiana oil investment/jobs.  Houston had since the 1940s been gaining on New Orleans as the center of the global energy industry, so when the layoffs started it made more sense for the oil companies to consolidate their business operations in Houston.  Texas was more attractive because it had no state income tax, better schools/universities, and less corruption; Louisiana has had a 6% state income tax on incomes above $50k for decades. 

Even though many energy companies still have a majority of their wells, shipyards and employees in Louisiana, all of the business activity is now in Houston.  Exxon Mobil moved the last of their execs/business analysts from New Orleans to Houston in 2003, and Shell has cut something like 80% of its New Orleans corporate workforce since 2005.