While businesses compete against each other, so do states. Cross border rivalries (and beyond) exist as state leaders and their legislatures put together business incentive programs to retain and attract job creating companies.
Each year since 2007 CNBC announces their list of the Top States for Business and this year their rankings again places Virginia at the top with North Carolina, Utah, Texas, and Tennessee filling out the top five slots.
Barry DuVal, President and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, gave the following statement regarding Virginia’s top recognition in the study.
“Today’s ranking reaffirms what we already knew – Virginia is the best state for business. The ranking reflects our long-standing investments in workforce training and our robust education system, while also recognizing the increasingly inclusive nature of the Commonwealth. This ranking validates our approach to maintain Virginia’s standing as the top state for business through long-term planning efforts and targeted policy recommendations as part of Blueprint Virginia.”
NBC uses a data driven model from a range of publicly available sources that totes up a maximum of 2500 points to complete the ranking. There are ten categories in the study and they weighted as follows:
- Cost of Doing Business (400 points – 16%)
- Infrastructure (375 points – 15%)
- Life, Health and Inclusion (375 points – 15%)
- Workforce (325 points – 13%)
- Economy (250 points – 10%)
- Business Friendliness (200 points – 8%)
- Access to Capital (175 points – 7%)
- Technology & Innovation (175 points – 7%)
- Education (150 points – 6%)
- Cost of Living (75 points – 3%)
All 50 states were scored on 85 metrics in 10 broad categories of competitiveness, then weighted based on how frequently states use them as selling points in their economic development marketing materials. In this way each state is given an opportunity “sell themselves” on the advantages they view as their state’s competitiveness.
CNBC shares how their methodology was developed and used. This year they noted that recent real world events influenced the current year’s study, specifically the pandemic and the national focus on racial and social justice. This led them to adjust their “Quality of Life” category and rename it “Life, Health and Inclusion”. Their existing measures such as crime rates, health care and environmental quality were expanded to include health-care resources and the states’ progress in ending the pandemic. While historically they reviewed state economic development websites, this year they also reviewed special Covid-19 resource pages. They also put greater focus on equity and inclusion, both in the new category and throughout the study.
Alaska came in 50th place, preceded by Hawaii, Maine, West Virginia and Rhode Island.
