Silicon Valley-From time to time a prominent successful CEO or business owner announces they are moving their company to another state. They typically tout the benefits of their new state, but some leave with a parting message to the state they left behind. Elon Musk’s decision to move Tesla from California to Texas is a recent notable example.
To put these and other decisions made by top business leaders in some perspective, CNBC each year publishes its’ “America’s Top States for Business”. The recently released ranking for 2022 assessed states using 88 metrics and 10 broad categories of competitiveness.
CNBC’s just released list places North Carolina number one overall followed by Washington and Virginia. Occurring outside of the rankings, but adding to its creditability, was Amazon’s decision in 2021 to locate its future supply chain hub in Virginia–a noteworthy endorsement of the state by the ecommerce behemoth.
Business Friendliness is one of the major categories upon which the states were evaluated. However, while a number of other states received a high ranking for this category such as North Dakota, Wyoming and, Idaho, only one of the overall top 10, Virginia. was also in the top 10 for friendliness. This reflects the other factors that are weighted for the annual ranking.
The states achieving first place in other ranking categories were:
- Workforce: Colorado
- Infrastructure: Indiana
- Cost of doing business: Missouri
- Economy: North Carolina
- Life, health and inclusion: Vermont
- Technology & Innovation: California.
While California has Silicon Valley that gave it first place for Technology & Innovation, its’ overall ranking was 29. This reflects its poor positions for Cost of Doing Business and Business Friendliness, 48 respectively for both.
CNBC reveals how a state may improve its ranking year to year, making it clear that the ranking is not an opinion survey, but derived using a range of data. The business news publisher reviews how a state promotes itself in their economic development marketing. They also place value in that a state touts its own attributes. The overall criteria and metrics were set through consultation with a diverse array of business and policy experts, including the states—giving each state the ability to earn up to 2500 points.
To see the full list, visit 2022 Americas Top States for Business
