Dueling reports add up to better LA economy

So, are people coming or going in Louisiana, and what does it all mean for the state’s economic and political futures?

Each year, Atlas Van Lines puts out data about their service moving households, calculating how many trips go from one state to another. For 2025, Louisiana repeated its performance of 2024 by being the state with the highest ratio of outbound to inbound trips of family goods, of nearly 2:1.

Also each year, U-Haul publishes rankings on rentals that happen in one state with the vehicle or trailer deposited in another state. Using raw numbers, unadjusted to population, Louisiana ranked 31^st for dropped-off rentals, but this is significant because it jumped 13 places from 2024.

On the surface, the data might appear conflicting, but a deeper investigation can explain why something contradictory – the ratio of outbound/inbound trips the highest in the last decade and a shift of three percent from inbound to outbounds from 2024 yet significantly relatively more rentals into the state than from 2024 – exists. Keep in mind that the state’s population actually increased in 2024 (latest data) for the first time in several years and last year saw a near-record in jobs. To start, it’s helpful to know what each study measures.

Carriage by container is for larger households and is more expensive compared to do-it-yourself operations that are cheaper and possible for smaller households, and a better option for long moves than wrestling with and hauling it all yourself. Consider as well that the former is presented as a ratio and the latter as a ranking based on raw numbers.

Thinking about the latter, without knowledge of the raw data it’s possible that Louisiana didn’t really increase that much. It could be that other states ahead of it in 2024 dropped dramatically, pushing the Bayou State’s position higher. Yet that seems unlikely given that the states ranked 32 to 40 with one exception all have significantly smaller populations, meaning for Louisiana’s relative ranking to rise above theirs without having a significant increase in dropping off rentals these states would have to have enormous falls relative to their populations, which seems unlikely.

So, it’s a genuine shift. Thinking about the former, there would be four kinds of households disproportionately represented (and overlapping to some extent): wealthier, older, larger, and homeowners. These are the kinds of households that would be more likely to accumulate a lot of stuff. Number in the household could explain a little, since the state according to the last census ranked 14^th in household size so that makes any single Louisiana family more likely to have to use a van rather than self-deport. But this only would explain the divergence, because the relationship between the measures is zero sum, and doesn’t address how the two statistics together can be reconciled.

What seems to be going on here is a disproportionate influx of younger and, for now, less-affluent households, which makes the ratio look more severe but also explains pumped-up rental drop-offs. Consider the kinds of economic success triggered in the first year of the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration. These changes – lower income taxation, reducing regulation, and landing some larger employers – tend to encourage less-rooted households looking to advance in the world to jump on board. Even the economic expansion that occurred tended to happen, for now, in industries that emphasize blue-collar employment (chemical and industrial) and/or stimulate greater economic activity (such as liquified natural gas production and transport) that doesn’t add many employees but has tremendous spillover effects that boost small businesses who to expand need to find go-getters.

The 2026 haul of business expansion, data centers and other high-paying jobs in other industries, may produce an entirely different set of immigrants, more weighed towards higher-end jobs. If so, the van imbalance should shift a few points in favor of inbound.

Thus, the disparate results can be reconciled, and point to an overall picture of regaining economic health driven by younger people wanting to get in on the ground floor of a potential significant expansion after years of stagnation, if not retrenchment, under Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards. That bodes well for Landry and legislative Republicans who stumped for and implemented the legal changes that now appear to be taking hold.