5 Worst States for Business

24/7 Wall St. recently examined all 50 states to discover the entire spectrum of those that were best and worst for business.

Here we look at the worst five and what they have in common. These states are West Virginia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and New Mexico. The methodology was complete — unusually complete for this type of research.

Methodology

To determine the best and worst states for business, 24/7 Wall St. compiled 47 measures into eight categories: business costs, cost of living, economy, infrastructure, labor and human capital, quality of life, regulation, and technology and innovation. Each category aimed to capture the essential elements that businesses consider when deciding where to locate.

Each category consists of several measures. Because many of the measures were interrelated, we created an index for each category using a geometric mean rather than the traditional arithmetic mean. We then used the geometric mean of each index score to calculate a state’s overall score. Potential scores ranged from one to 50, with lower values indicating better scores. Two categories — labor and human capital and technology and innovation — received double weight, and quality of life and cost of living were given half weights. Cost of business, infrastructure, economy, and regulation received full weight.

24/7 Wall St.
5 Best States for Business