Louisiana Prevailing Wage

Louisiana repealed its state prevailing wage law in 1988, becoming the first Southern state to do so. For contractors bidding most public work in Louisiana — state, parish, and municipal projects funded purely with local or state dollars — there is no state-mandated prevailing wage. You are free to price labor at your own competitive market rates, which gives Louisiana bidders meaningful flexibility on the labor line and often a lower bid baseline than contractors working in wage-mandated states.

The critical exception is federal funding. The federal Davis-Bacon Act still governs any federally funded or federally assisted construction project exceeding $2,000. The moment federal money flows into a job — highway dollars, HUD funds, FEMA recovery work, or federal grants — you must pay the U.S. Department of Labor wage determination for the project's locality and trade classifications, and submit weekly certified payroll (form WH-347) to the contracting agency. Misreading whether a project carries federal funds is the single biggest pricing pitfall in Louisiana: bidding it as a free-market job when Davis-Bacon applies can erase your margin and expose you to back-wage liability.

Before bidding, confirm the funding source in writing and read the wage determination attached to the solicitation. Build the correct fringe-and-base rates into your labor estimate, classify every worker accurately, and set up payroll systems to produce compliant certified records. On private and state-only work, price competitively; on anything touched by federal dollars, treat Davis-Bacon compliance as a hard cost and a contractual obligation, not an afterthought.