Business Facilities’ 15th Annual Rankings: State Rankings Report

Our 15th annual rankings report maintains BF’s standard for credible and comprehensive results. Rankings categories may evolve over time, but our commitment to an unbiased assessment of valid metrics never wavers.

The rankings ecosystem is getting crowded and, like everything else in 21st Century America, it appears to be dancing to the tune of reality TV. The competition is the show: there must be winners and losers. Don’t spoil the fun by drilling down into the minutiae of “weighted factors” that reveal the script behind the results. What counts is that your favorite business network or mainstream trade pub has declared Pleasantville the “best place” for something or other; there is no joy in Mudville, perennial also-rans.

The reality of economic development can’t be expressed in sound bite-sized morsels, and the progress of locations in meeting today’s challenges can’t always be measured in winners and losers. Sometimes it’s the nuances that reveal more:?a location may have the lion’s share of an industry’s jobs, but if that industry’s new facilities are going elsewhere, then that location doesn’t have growth potential. A state may have the largest installed capacity of a certain type of renewable energy, but that state won’t meet its renewable energy portfolio standard’s goal if only 10 percent of its electricity is generated from renewables.

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