How Does Your State Rank for Business? Texas, Virginia, Utah, Idaho, Colorado Top the List
July 15, 2008 by Jean Murray
CNBC recently released a ranking of U.S. states as to their competitiveness and top states in which to do business. CNBC used ten weighted categories and combined rankings for all categories to get an overall ranking.
The categories were (in order of most to least weight): cost of doing business (taxes), work force, economy (”solid” – whatever that means – and diversity of industries), education, quality of life, technology and innovation, transportation, cost of living, business friendliness (regulations), and access to capital.
I commented in my About.com blog that I disagreed with the weighting. Access to capital is a heck of a lot more important than quality of life. Sure, I want a great life while I’m running my business, but if I can’t get a lender to give me money, I’m not going to care about quality of life. For example, Alaska and Hawaii were last. While Hawaii had a great rating on “quality of life,” it was low on most other factors; it was 49th and 50th on cost of living and business friendliness.
What do you think of the ranking? What factor/s do you think are mis-represented? Do you agree with your state’s ranking?