5 Best & 5 Worst States for Business

It appears CEOs prefer doing business in states run by Republican governors, or so says Chief Executive magazine’s ninth annual “The Best and Worst States for Business” survey.

The survey asked 736 CEOs to grade states on a variety of “competitive metrics that CEOs themselves regard as critical,” including taxation and regulation, quality of workforce, and living environment.

“The tax and regulatory grade includes a measure of how CEOs grade a state’s attitude toward business, a key indicator,” the report write-up notes.

“In the minds of most leaders, a state’s friendliness is closely aligned with its tax and regulatory regime. Similarly, workforce quality also measures the perceived cooperativeness of workers with management, as well as the people’s general work ethic and education attainment,” the write-up reads.

“The living environment metric measures the perceived quality of education and public health facilities, as well as the affordability and quality of real estate, the transportation system and related environmental factors,” it adds.

And although three of the top 10 worst states for business are controlled by Republican governors, the top 10 best states, as noted by the Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering, are all run by Republican governors.

Here are the top five best states for business: