Please, John Bel Edwards – tell us more of your miraculous work on Louisiana’s economy.

Unfortunately, third parties don’t appear to share in such glowing assessments of how well the state is doing. WalletHub says this is the second-worst economy in the country.

Louisiana isn’t actually 49th in this ranking – we’re 50th. WalletHub included Washington, DC, so there are 51 “states” ranked in this one. And Louisiana is ahead of only Alaska, whose economy is absolutely in the toilet at present with an unemployment rate at six and a half percent.

Among the particulars in this study, on the good side Louisiana is tied with a number of states for most exports per capita – which is a function of oil and gas, the petrochemical industry and also the state’s ports serving as export terminals for the nation’s agricultural products. But on the bad side Louisiana ranks among the five worst in: education attainment of recent immigrants (48th) and lowest percentage of jobs in high-tech industries (47th).

Some other rankings for Louisiana within this study…

• 42nd – GDP Growth
• 39th – Startup Activity
• 47th – % of Jobs in High-Tech Industries
• 43rd – Annual Median Household Income
• 46th – Change in Nonfarm Payrolls
• 31st – Government Surplus/Deficit per Capita
• 36th – Unemployment Rate

Actually the state’s unemployment rate is worse than 36th – as of the end of April it was 44th, and the state’s U-6 unemployment rate for the first quarter of the year, at 9.5 percent, was the worst in the South.

And here’s how Louisiana’s southern neighbors fared in the WalletHub study, to give our readers some perspective on just how competitive the state really is at present…

North Carolina: 10th
Texas: 12th
Georgia: 14th
Virginia: 17th
Florida: 18th
Tennessee: 22nd
South Carolina: 34th
Alabama: 35th
Kentucky: 45th
Arkansas: 46th
Mississippi: 49th

They’re all doing better than Louisiana is. Everybody is doing better than Louisiana is. The only place doing worse is a frozen wasteland full of caribou and glaciers.

We can either fix this in the fall elections, or be resigned to the fact it won’t get better until we do.