States Ranked by Business Climate: What the Major Raters Agree On

Two rulers, deliberately different

This report synthesizes two named raters and attributes every judgment. CNBC's America's Top States for Business 2025 measured all 50 states on 135 metrics in 10 categories, its largest methodology ever, and crowned North Carolina for the third time in four years, followed by Texas, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. The bottom five, in order from 46th: Rhode Island, Vermont, Montana, Hawaii, and Alaska (CNBC, July 2025).

The Tax Foundation's 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index asks a narrower question: how well is the tax code built? Wyoming ranked first, South Dakota second. New York ranked last at 50, with New Jersey 49th (Tax Foundation, October 2025).

Where both rulers point the same way, the conclusion is strong. Texas, Florida, and Tennessee score in the top tier of both systems. Tennessee is the cleanest case in the country: eighth with CNBC, eighth with the Tax Foundation. No other state matches its rank on both boards.

The split decisions tell you more than the agreements

Four states expose exactly what each rater measures. Washington ranks 14th with CNBC on the strength of its tech economy, and 45th with the Tax Foundation, which faults its business and occupation gross receipts tax and recent tax increases (CNBC, 2025; Tax Foundation, 2026). Montana is the mirror image: sixth-best tax structure in the nation, 48th with CNBC, which scores its workforce dead last (Tax Foundation, 2026; CNBC, 2025).

Alaska is the widest gap on the board. CNBC ranked it the worst state for business in America in 2025, last in the Economy category, as oil prices sagged. The Tax Foundation has long scored Alaska's tax structure among the nation's best. Both are measuring honestly. One measures the code; the other measures the consequences of depending on one commodity.

Minnesota completes the set: 10th with CNBC on education and quality of life, bottom third with the Tax Foundation on tax design. A reader who sees only one scorecard for any of these four states is being told half a story.

Does the federal data back the raters?

Ratings are opinions with methodologies. Federal data is the check. It mostly confirms the top: North Carolina, CNBC's No. 1, was one of only two states with statistically significant job growth in the year through May 2026, up 61,800 jobs, and led the nation in net domestic migration at 84,064 (BLS, 2026; Census Bureau, Vintage 2025). Texas and Florida pair top-3 CNBC ranks with the second-most migrants and the fastest 2025 GDP growth, respectively (Census Bureau; BEA, 2026).

The check also catches the raters aging badly. CNBC ranked Virginia fourth in July 2025. By May 2026, Virginia was the only state in America with a significant 12-month job loss, down 52,200 jobs as federal downsizing hit (BLS, 2026). And New York, ranked dead last by the Tax Foundation, grew real GDP 2.9 percent in 2025, second fastest in the nation (BEA, 2026). A bad tax structure and a strong year can coexist. The record shows both, so this report does too.

The structural direction is one-way

Whatever weight a reader gives each rater, the policy direction underneath them is not ambiguous. Ohio became the 14th flat-tax state in 2026. Eight states cut individual income tax rates on January 1, 2026: Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oklahoma. New Hampshire finished abolishing its last income tax and climbed three places on the index (Tax Foundation, 2026).

Movement at the top of the CNBC table tracks the same geography: the 2025 top ten contains six Southern and Midwestern states, and the top three are all Sun Belt. The framework here pays no attention to which party produced any of it. It reports what the raters scored and what the federal data shows. If the pattern produces discomfort, the discomfort belongs to the reader, not the data.