The most direct answer to what a BCBA salary in Louisiana looks like comes from employers' own job ads. On September 16, 2026, we found 11 Louisiana employers that stated a closed annual base salary range for a board certified behavior analyst role. Counting each employer once, the median midpoint of those ranges was $73,500. Counting each of their 13 distinct ads, it was $85,000. The gap between those two numbers is the real story. A national autism chain posted midpoints of $95,000 to $98,000, with bands topping out at $115,000 to $118,000, while six local employers in the Baton Rouge area, Lafayette, Shreveport and the Lake Charles area posted midpoints between $60,000 and $73,500.

This guide breaks that market apart. We cover what employers post by region, why published salary figures for Louisiana range from about $67,000 to nearly $115,000, and how far the money goes in one of the cheapest states in the country. We also look at why Louisiana's BCBA job postings run even further below the national rate than its supply of analysts does, at a Medicaid rate for BCBA work that has not changed since 2017, and at the Louisiana license you need before you start.

BCBA salary in Louisiana: what employers post in 2026

On September 16, 2026, we searched LinkedIn, an Indeed-network job site and employers' own career pages for BCBA jobs across Louisiana, from New Orleans, the Northshore and Baton Rouge to Lafayette, Lake Charles, Shreveport, Monroe and Alexandria. We counted a salary only when the employer stated it: in the job description, on its own careers site, or in a job board's pay field or pay line attached to the ad. We merged reposts of the same job and left out staffing agencies, contract roles, remote jobs tagged to Louisiana that actually serve other states, and postings more than a year old. Hourly pay, "up to" figures and bonus-inclusive totals are kept out of the median and covered separately below.

Louisiana has no law requiring private employers to post pay. Only 13 distinct BCBA ads from 11 employers stated a closed annual base range. Many other Louisiana BCBA ads we read stated no pay, only an hourly rate, or only an "up to" ceiling. The 13 ranges have a median midpoint of $73,500 if each employer counts once and $85,000 if each distinct ad counts. The difference comes entirely from one national chain, which posted three separate bands across several Louisiana metros: $75,000 to $115,000, $76,000 to $116,000, and $78,000 to $118,000 for a more senior step. Every other employer posted a single range. Across the 13 ads, the typical posted floor was $72,000 and the typical ceiling $90,000.

Treat these numbers as what Louisiana employers advertise, not what BCBAs earn. The sample is small, it leans on the employers willing to post pay, and 8 of the 13 ranges appear only in a job board's pay field or its automatically added pay line, not in the ad's own text or on the employer's site. Several of the largest job boards also block automated reading. One large employer that posts its BCBA pay only as an "up to" figure is not in the median at all.

Three pay groups, not one number

Grouping the 11 employers shows why a single statewide number misleads.

Baton Rouge shows the split most clearly. Three local employers in the Baton Rouge area posted midpoints of $70,000 to $73,500, while the two chains posted Baton Rouge-area bands with midpoints of $85,000 to $98,000. In New Orleans, a local provider posted $90,000 to $115,000 with an expectation of 30 billable hours a week, and a school-based role at a partner school site posted $72,000 to $112,000. A center in Ponchatoula, on the Northshore, posted $80,000 to $95,000. No employer in Houma-Thibodaux, Monroe or Alexandria posted a closed annual base range we could count.

With 11 employers, these groups are directional rather than settled. They do suggest that in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the two metros where both local clinics and a chain posted ranges, the chains' midpoints ran $10,000 or more above the local clinics'. Before treating that gap as extra pay, ask what the chain expects you to bill.

Base, bonus and billable hours

Louisiana ads often mix salary with bonus, and the workload behind the same title varies widely. Four examples from the September harvest show what to look for.

• A bonus folded into the pay field. A multi-state provider's New Orleans ad states "Base Salary: $80,000-$90,000" and a performance bonus of up to $12,000 a year. The job-board pay field on the same ad reads "$80,000 - $102,000 a year," which adds the maximum bonus to the top of the base band.
• A large bonus with a monthly billing floor. The national chain offers "Up to $30,000 in annual bonuses" on top of its salary bands. It also requires BCBAs to "Fulfill a minimum of 120 payor/client authorized billable hours per month, inclusive of Supervisory hours and therapy hours," which works out to about 28 billable hours a week.
• Very different caseloads. The Northshore center advertising $80,000 to $95,000 lists "Caseload = 7-8 clients." A Baton Rouge center advertising $66,500 to $80,000 describes "Manageable caseloads of approximately 12-15 clients," with a team of about 6 to 8 line technicians.
• A ceiling with no floor. One employer's combined BCBA and BCaBA ad, reposted in dozens of Louisiana towns, lists "Up to $120,640 a year" and no minimum. The same ad reads "Up to $124,800 a year" in East Texas and "Up to $135,200 a year" in South Arkansas, which suggests it is a recruiting ceiling, not a pay band.

Hourly, school and public-sector roles

Hourly BCBA ads are uncommon in Louisiana. The four we found for BCBAs alone had midpoints between about $49 and $60 an hour. Hourly roles can be part-time, hybrid or as-needed, so do not multiply them by 2,080 hours to compare them with a salary. Our guide to BCBA hourly rates explains how to compare the two.

Some schools and public employers publish pay scales that include behavior roles. A New Orleans charter school network's 2026-27 salary scale for BCBAs starts at $68,000 in year one and reaches $78,800 in year 10, with an added 8.3 percent for an 11-month role. A school district in suburban New Orleans lists its Behavior Interventionist at $63,000 to $84,840, and BCBA certification is one of five credentials it accepts. A state-run supports and services center in central Louisiana advertised an Applied Behavior Analysis Therapist at $35 to $45 an hour in its most recent posting we found, which closed in January 2025. Louisiana State Civil Service has no classified job title for behavior analysts, so state jobs that require the credential are filled as unclassified positions. If you are weighing a school-based BCBA job, compare it on a monthly basis.

Why published BCBA salaries for Louisiana disagree

Search for BCBA pay in Louisiana and you will find answers from about $67,000 to nearly $115,000. Most of that spread comes from sources measuring different things.

A few patterns stand out. Salary.com sits lowest: its Louisiana 90th percentile, $84,946, is about the same as the $85,000 median across distinct employer ads. ZipRecruiter's statewide figure is lower than every Louisiana city it lists, including $84,644 for New Orleans and $85,533 for Baton Rouge, so its state and city numbers are best read as separate estimates rather than a ranking. Glassdoor's $114,703 rests on only 50 self-reports of total pay, and the employer-level figures on the same page sit between about $73,000 and $80,000. Indeed also publishes a Louisiana figure, but its pages blocked automated reading and we could not verify the number, so we left it out.

None of this means one source is right and the others are wrong. It means you should know which question each one answers before you bring it into a negotiation. Our BCBA salary negotiation guide covers how to use them.

The federal wage figure is not a Louisiana BCBA salary

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no occupation code for behavior analysts. Sites that quote a government figure for BCBAs usually borrow SOC 19-3039, "Psychologists, All Other." For Louisiana, that category reports a median of $104,460 in May 2025.

It does not describe Louisiana's BCBAs. BLS estimates only about 170 jobs in the category statewide, and that estimate carries a relative standard error of 36.5 percent. Even if every one of those jobs were held by a behavior analyst, it would cover about a fifth of the state's 805 BCBAs. The distribution also looks like two groups sharing one code: the 25th percentile is $66,780, close to what clinics advertise, and then the median jumps $37,680 higher. Nationally, 45.2 percent of jobs in this category are in the federal executive branch. If you see $104,000 quoted as Louisiana BCBA pay, it most likely came from this category.

Where a Louisiana BCBA salary goes furthest

Louisiana is one of the cheapest places in the country to live. The Bureau of Economic Analysis puts its 2024 price level at 88.2 against a national 100, the fifth lowest among the 50 states and Washington, DC. Its nonmetropolitan areas sit lower still, at 82.5. Adjusted for those prices, the employer-posted median of $73,500 is worth about $83,300 in average US dollars, and $85,000 is worth about $96,400.

The adjustment matters for the published models too. ZipRecruiter's Louisiana figure is 14.5 percent below its national figure before adjusting for prices and only 3.1 percent below after. Because metro-level samples are so small, the table below applies local prices to single employer postings from each area rather than to metro medians.

Two things follow. A Shreveport offer at $72,500 buys more than a Baton Rouge offer at $73,250, because Shreveport's prices are about 7 percent lower. And the New Orleans provider, in one of the two most expensive metros in the state, posted high enough to come out ahead after the adjustment. Each row is one employer, so use the table to adjust your own offers rather than to rank cities.

Louisiana's BCBA gap: fewer analysts and fewer job postings

As of September 16, 2026, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) counted 805 BCBAs living in Louisiana, plus 36 BCBA-Ds. That is 17.4 BCBAs for every 100,000 residents, against 22.8 nationally, which ranks Louisiana 28th among the 50 states and Washington, DC. Matching the national rate would take about 250 more analysts.

Louisiana is level with Texas and well ahead of Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, which has the lowest BCBA density in the country. The workforce is also growing faster than the nation. BCBAs and BCBA-Ds in Louisiana rose 14.5 percent during 2025, against 10.7 percent nationally, and the state's BCBA count has grown from 149 in September 2016 to 805 in September 2026. For national context, see how many BCBAs there are.

But advertised demand is lower still

A below-average supply of analysts might be expected to come with heavy job advertising. Louisiana's job-posting data does not show that. The BACB's 2025 employment demand report, prepared with the labor market firm Lightcast, lists the 30 states with the most BCBA job postings. Louisiana is not on the list, so it had at most 895 postings in 2025, out of 132,307 nationally.

Even at that ceiling, Louisiana had at most 1.14 postings for every BCBA and BCBA-D at the end of 2025, against 1.77 nationally. Of the 30 states in the report, only Florida's ratio, by our calculation, is below Louisiana's ceiling. Measured per resident, Louisiana had at most 19.4 postings for every 100,000 people, at most half the national rate of 38.7. These are our own calculations, and they compare a year of job ads with a count of certified people, so they are upper bounds on advertised demand, not counts of open jobs.

So Louisiana is below average on analysts and further below average on advertised demand. That is consistent with the pay data: outside the national chains, New Orleans and the Northshore, no local clinic posted a midpoint above $73,500. For the national version of this picture, see our look at the BCBA shortage.

An unusual credential mix

Louisiana leans heavily on assistant behavior analysts. It has 144 Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBAs), 3.1 for every 100,000 residents, the second-highest rate in the country and more than twice the national 1.3. The state board also issued 48 new state assistant certificates in 2025. BCaBA job postings moved the other way, though: Louisiana's dropped 43 percent in 2025, from 194 to 110, against a 26 percent drop nationally, even as the state's BCaBA count rose from 106 to 122 over the same year. Our guide to BCaBA jobs covers that market.

On paper, Louisiana also looks short of technicians, with just 1.21 BACB Registered Behavior Technicians for every BCBA against 3.50 nationally. That number misleads. Louisiana registers its technicians with its own board as Registered Line Technicians, and neither state law nor Medicaid requires the BACB credential, so the BACB count does not measure Louisiana's technician workforce.

Where licensed analysts live

The Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board reports new and renewed licenses by the licensee's parish of residence. In both 2024 and 2025, the same 17 of Louisiana's 64 parishes had no licensed behavior analyst renew or receive a new license with a home address there. Those parishes are home to about 272,000 people. That does not mean no one serves them, since analysts travel and work by telehealth, but it does show where the workforce lives. Six parishes, East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, Orleans, Calcasieu, Lafayette and St. Tammany, accounted for 58 percent of in-state licensees in 2025.

A thin in-state training pipeline

Louisiana trains few of its own analysts. McNeese State University runs the state's only master's program accredited by the Association for Behavior Analysis International, and its own reports to that body show enrollment falling from 34 in 2018 to 7 in 2025, with no degrees conferred in 2025. The BACB's pass-rate reports listed 20 first-time BCBA exam candidates from Louisiana training programs in 2022 and 8 in 2024, plus one program reported only as a 2023-24 total of 6. Programs with fewer than six candidates are left out of those reports, so the true totals are higher by an unknown amount, but with the state adding about 100 BCBAs and BCBA-Ds in 2025 alone, most of that growth likely came from programs based elsewhere, including online ones, or from analysts moving in.

What Louisiana Medicaid pays for ABA, and why it matters for your offer

BCBA pay is ultimately bounded by what an employer collects for each billable hour, and Medicaid is a major payer for children's ABA. Louisiana Medicaid began covering ABA on February 1, 2014, after a federal court in the long-running Chisholm class action ordered the state to enroll BCBAs as providers. Since February 2018, all Medicaid ABA has run through the Healthy Louisiana managed care plans, which generally must pay at least the rates on the state's published ABA fee schedule.

The state's July 2025 Medicaid rate increase for physician services left ABA codes out. For scale, if a BCBA billed the national chain's 120-hour monthly minimum entirely at the $90 rate, that would bring in $10,800 a month, or $129,600 a year, before the employer pays salary, benefits, rent, administration and the time that cannot be billed. Assessment hours pay more, hours billed to commercial insurers follow separate contracts, and many employers count billable hours differently, so treat that as a rough ceiling on one kind of work, not a formula for your pay.

Spending is rising even though rates are flat. Medicaid managed care payments to Louisiana's "Certified Behavior Analyst" provider type grew from $111.6 million in state fiscal year 2023-24 to $137.7 million in 2024-25, according to the Louisiana Department of Health's annual reports. In September 2026, state Medicaid officials told The Center Square that ABA spending had risen 41 percent over three years because more children were receiving ABA and each child was receiving more hours, not because of rate increases. They said the department is reviewing its policies on hours, medical necessity and progress, and now applies stricter screening, including site visits and fingerprinting, to ABA providers.

Two more Medicaid details affect jobs. First, one of the five Healthy Louisiana plans, Healthy Blue, leaves the program when its contract ends December 31, 2026, and more than 290,000 of its members move to one of the four remaining plans on January 1, 2027. Receiving plans must honor existing Healthy Blue prior authorizations for up to 60 days. Second, Medicaid approves supervision at 2 hours for every 10 hours of technician therapy, and since April 2024 one supervising analyst may generally oversee no more than 24 technicians a day and no more than 10 assistants.

Commercial insurance covers ABA but sets no pay rate

Louisiana's autism insurance mandate, La. R.S. 22:1050, requires covered health plans to cover diagnosis and treatment of autism, including ABA, for people under 21. The statute still lists a $36,000 annual benefit maximum. Federal rules separately bar annual dollar limits on essential health benefits, so how much that cap matters depends on the plan. The mandate does not set what insurers pay providers. In 2022 the Legislature adopted a resolution urging the health department and commercial insurers to raise ABA rates, but a resolution does not carry the force of law.

Do you need a license to work as a BCBA in Louisiana?

Yes. Louisiana requires a Licensed Behavior Analyst (LBA) license from the Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board under the state's Behavior Analyst Practice Act. BACB certification alone is not a Louisiana credential. Practicing behavior analysis without a license, unless an exemption applies, is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, a fine of $100 to $500 per violation, or both. For a current BCBA, the path looks like this.

1. Hold BACB certification first. The board requires applicants to be certified by the BACB before applying, and the statute requires a master's degree. Louisiana does not accept the Qualified Behavior Analyst credential from QABA; our comparison of the QBA and the BCBA explains the difference.
2. Apply with a background check. The board requires a notarized application, official transcripts, three reference letters and a criminal background check. The application fee is $400 and the background check $50.
3. Pass the jurisprudence exam. Once the board has your application materials, it issues an online, open-book, multiple-choice exam on Louisiana law. The exam fee is $75.
4. Renew every year. All board credentials renew on a July 1 to June 30 cycle, and LBA renewal costs $200. A license not renewed by June 30 lapses on July 1, and every technician working under a lapsed analyst must stop serving that analyst's clients. LBAs report 32 continuing education credits, including 4 in ethics, every two years.

There is no licensure by reciprocity. The board declined a proposed reciprocity rule in January 2023, so analysts moving from another state apply the same way as everyone else. Assistants hold a State-Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst certificate, and technicians are registered with the board by their supervising LBA. The board issued 143 new LBA licenses in 2025, 112 of them to Louisiana residents. In 2026 the Legislature also repealed the board's own July 1, 2028 end date, through Act 872. For how licensure works across states, see our guide to becoming a licensed behavior analyst.

What RBTs and line technicians earn in Louisiana

Across 27 Louisiana employers whose technician pay we collected in September 2026, the typical employer posts about $17 an hour, with the middle half between $15.00 and $17.25. Employer-level figures ran from $12 to $25.50. Pay runs higher in the southeast than in the west and north: the typical employer posted about $17.13 an hour in the New Orleans, Northshore, Baton Rouge and Houma-Thibodaux areas, and about $15.38 in Lafayette, Lake Charles, Shreveport, Monroe and Alexandria. That is roughly $4 an hour below Ohio, where the typical employer posted about $21 in September 2026.

Louisiana does not require the BACB's Registered Behavior Technician credential. Technicians must instead be registered with the Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board as Registered Line Technicians, which requires being at least 18, a high school diploma or equivalent, and a state police background check. Some employers pay more for the national credential: one Shreveport clinic lists "$12 - $14 hourly" for registered line technicians and "$14 - $20 hourly" for RBTs. Registration costs can fall on the new hire. A Slidell provider's ad says the $90 cost of board registration and a background check "must initially be paid by the applicant," with reimbursement after six months. Louisiana has no state minimum wage law, so the federal $7.25 applies.

How to read a Louisiana BCBA offer

1. Separate base from bonus. A Louisiana pay field can include a $12,000 bonus or sit beside a promise of up to $30,000 more. Ask for the guaranteed base and the exact target behind any bonus.
2. Get the billable-hours expectation and caseload in writing. Louisiana ads we read ranged from 30 billable hours a week, to a 120-hour monthly minimum, to caseloads of 7 to 8 clients at one center and 12 to 15 at another. The same salary can mean very different workloads.
3. Ask about payer mix. A Medicaid-heavy employer works with rates that have not moved since 2022, a department reviewing hours, and the Healthy Blue transition on January 1, 2027. Ask how many clients are affected and which plans the employer contracts with.
4. Compare in real terms. Adjust a New Orleans offer against a Shreveport or Lafayette offer for local prices before deciding which pays more.
5. Ask who pays licensing costs. Your LBA renewal is annual. One Baton Rouge employer lists "Paid Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board renewal fees" as a benefit; most ads we read did not mention it.
6. Do not count on a posted range. Louisiana law does not require private employers to post pay. A 2026 law requires salary ranges only in announcements for classified state jobs, so most offers will be a conversation, not a listing.

For a neighboring market, see our guides to BCBA salary in Texas and BCBA jobs in Houston. If you work in homes rather than a center, read about in-home BCBA jobs. BCBA salary by state gives the national picture.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a BCBA make in Louisiana?

Louisiana employers' posted base salary ranges for BCBA roles have a median midpoint of about $73,500 when each of 11 employers is counted once, or $85,000 when each of 13 distinct ads is counted, based on employer-posted ranges from September 16, 2026. Posted bands ran from $55,000 to $118,000. Published estimates include $67,160 at Salary.com, $76,170 at ZipRecruiter and $114,703 at Glassdoor, which reflects total pay self-reported by only 50 people.

Which Louisiana city pays BCBAs the most?

The highest bands from local employers came from New Orleans and the Northshore, with midpoints of $87,500 to $102,500. Local clinics in the Baton Rouge area, Lafayette, Shreveport and the Lake Charles area posted midpoints of $60,000 to $73,500, while national chains posted about $85,000 to $98,000 across several metros. Samples are small, and lower prices in Shreveport, Lafayette and Lake Charles narrow the gap.

Is Louisiana a good state for BCBA jobs?

It is a mixed market. Louisiana has 17.4 BCBAs per 100,000 residents, below the national 22.8, and its analyst workforce grew faster than the nation's in 2025. But it had at most 895 BCBA job postings in 2025, which is at most half the national rate per resident, and it is one of the cheapest states to live in, which stretches a modest salary further.

Do you need a license to be a BCBA in Louisiana?

Yes. You need a Licensed Behavior Analyst license from the Louisiana Behavior Analyst Board, and you must hold BACB certification before applying. The process includes a background check, three references, a $400 application fee and a $75 open-book jurisprudence exam. Licenses renew every year for $200, and Louisiana offers no licensure by reciprocity.

How much do RBTs make in Louisiana?

About $17 an hour at the typical employer, based on pay posted by 27 Louisiana employers hiring ABA technicians in September 2026, with the middle half between $15.00 and $17.25. Louisiana requires technicians to register with its behavior analyst board as Registered Line Technicians rather than hold the BACB's RBT credential, and some employers pay more for RBTs.

What does Louisiana Medicaid pay for ABA?

Louisiana Medicaid pays $22.50 per 15 minutes, or $90 an hour, for protocol modification by a licensed behavior analyst, $25.00 per 15 minutes, or $100 an hour, for assessment, and $12.50 per 15 minutes, or $50 an hour, for technician-delivered therapy. The analyst rate has not changed since January 2017, and no published ABA rate has changed since July 2022.

Do Louisiana employers have to post salary ranges?

No. Louisiana has no pay transparency law for private employers, and bills to ban salary-history questions failed in every regular session from 2021 through 2025. A 2026 law, Act 534, requires salary ranges only in announcements for classified state government jobs.

The bottom line

A Louisiana BCBA can expect employers to advertise base salary ranges with a median midpoint of about $73,500 to $85,000, depending on whether you count employers or ads. Local clinics in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Shreveport and Lake Charles cluster in the low $70,000s or below, while New Orleans and Northshore employers and national chains post considerably more. Louisiana's low prices lift that to roughly $83,000 to $96,000 in average US dollars. The state has fewer analysts per resident than the nation, but fewer job postings still, and its Medicaid rate for analysts' protocol modification work has sat at $90 an hour since 2017.

That makes the details of each offer matter more than the state average. Separate base from bonus, get the billable target and caseload in writing, ask how the employer is funded and how the Healthy Blue transition affects it, and compare offers in real terms. Keep in mind that Louisiana's Medicaid department is actively reviewing its ABA policies, so the funding behind these jobs may change.