Lake Charles, LA
Population: 82,430 (2022) · Small Cities (50K-100K)
Good fiscal health, above-average across most metrics
Spending Breakdown
Spending data sourced from the Census Bureau's Annual Survey of State & Local Government Finances. Per-capita comparisons use the Lincoln Institute's Fiscally Standardized Cities methodology for fair cross-city benchmarking.
Revenue Sources
Per Capita Spending by Department
Score Breakdown
Debt Overview
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vs New Orleans, LAvs Baton Rouge, LAvs Shreveport, LAOther Cities in Louisiana
Frequently Asked Questions
Lake Charles, LA spends $12,552 per resident, based on total expenditures of $1.0B for a population of 82,430. The city has a Fiscal Health Score of B (73/100).
Lake Charles, LA has total expenditures of $1.0B and total revenue of $533.9M. The city carries $322K in total debt, based on Census Bureau data from 2023.
Lake Charles, LA employs 0 government workers, of which 0 are full-time. The average government salary is $0, with 0.0 employees per 10,000 residents.
Lake Charles, LA has a Fiscal Health Score of B (73/100). This score evaluates budget balance, debt burden, pension funding, spending efficiency, revenue diversity, and 3-year fiscal trajectory compared to peer cities of similar population.
this entity is one of the data points covered by this site’s U.S. municipal and county government finances dataset. The detail above comes directly from the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances; the context that follows situates the headline numbers against the broader distribution across U.S. cities, counties, and states.
Every number on this page links back to the Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances; the methodology page describes the inputs, refresh cadence, and known limitations of the underlying data product.
Practical use of this page is in combination with the comparison and ranking pages elsewhere on the site, which surface the same data for this entity’s peers within U.S. cities, counties, and states. A single-entity reading without peer context can be misleading when an entity is an outlier on one axis but typical on another.