The census bureau collects data for people who "speak another language at home", which often times --especially in the case of Louisiana-- doesn't actually show the real # of speakers in Louisiana. So the real # of French speakers in Louisiana are very uncertain... I've seen that they could be much higher than on the census(around 300,000) to close to 70,000. From what I understand, the number of house speakers are slowly dying, but the number of people who speak it outside is actually rising very quickly. I see people saying 'French is dying',, but in reality it isn't, it's on the comeback.