Top states for business
1. Georgia 2. North Carolina 3. Kentucky 4. Louisiana 5. Texas 6. Tennessee 7. Ohio 8. Utah 9. Oklahoma 10. Indiana Source: Site Selection magazine
Georgia has been ranked as the best state to do business for the third consecutive year by Site Selection magazine, a trade publication that tracks economic development trends.
The new 2015 ranking released Wednesday picked the top four states entirely from the Southeast. Tennessee ranked No. 6., while Alabama placed 14th among the 50 states.
“It’s hard to stop a train, and the train called Georgia is on cruise control,” Site Selection Editor Mark Arend said in the magazine’s cover story on the top states for business.
The ranking is based upon announced capital investment and the state’s relative tax burden, labor and land costs, and training and infrastructure, among other factors.
“Once again, Georgia has been named the top state in which to do business, reflecting our success in strengthening Georgia’s economic environment and creating a top-notch workforce,” Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said in a statement Wednesday. “Through collaborative public-private sector efforts, we have created hundreds of thousands of jobs for families, invested millions in our local communities and improved the overall quality of life for our citizens.”
Each November, Site Selection releases rankings for the top states in which to do business. Georgia has been ranked among the top 10 states in Site Selection’s business climate rankings throughout the last decade. The magazine cited Georgia for its growing film industry, which generated an economic gain of more than $6 billion with 78,000 jobs, and for landing both the $100 million Porsche Cars North America headquarters and Home Depot’s new, 200,000-square-foot Marietta Technology Center.
The rankings are determined by a survey of corporate site selectors paired with an index of tax burden criteria according to the Tax Foundation and KPMG’s Location Matters analysis and performance in Conway Data’s New Plant Database, which tracks new and expanded business facility activity.