Washington is America's Top State for Business in 2017
With the nation's fastest-growing economy and an all-star business roster of household names and up-and-comers, Washington — the Evergreen State — soars above the competition as America's Top State for Business in 2017.
The home of Amazon (AMZN) and Costco (COST), Boeing (BA) and Expedia, as well as rising stars like Adaptive Biotechnologies, online marketplace OfferUp and space company Blue Origin, Washington has the old and new economies covered — as well as pretty much everything in between.
But the success story does not end there. At a time when the best workforce rules, Washington boasts the nation's largest concentration of STEM (science, technology, education and math) workers. Nearly 1 in every 10 Washington workers is in those professions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The University of Washington's computer science school — recently named for one of the university's most famous alumni, Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen — is world class. There is no brain drain here; no state does better at hanging on to its college graduates. And the state is consistently a magnet for investment capital. Washington businesses attracted nearly $1.6 billion in venture capital last year, the sixth-highest total in the nation.
Washington climbs to the top of our rankings this year with 1,621 out of 2,500 points, including top 10 finishes in five of our 10 categories of competitiveness. As always, we score all 50 states using 66 metrics across those 10 categories. Using our tried-and-true methodology, we assign a weight to each category based on how frequently the states use them as selling points in their economic development marketing pitches.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/this-is-americas-top-state-for-business-in-2017/ar-BBEfG23?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp
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