Skip to footer

Top 5 states for business in 2012

These five states were the best places to do business in 2012, a year where states' financial fortunes finally saw improvement. Can you guess which state was number one?

1. Texas

LM Otero/AP/File
Texas Gov. Rick Perry waves after speaking during the Texas Republican Convention in Fort Worth, Texas, last month. Texas has regained the title as the Top State for Business for 2012, with high marks for Infrastructure, Technology and Innovation, and Cost of Living. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

  • By Scott Cohn CNBC Senior Correspondent

Texas has done it again.

The Lone Star State makes a triumphant return as America’s Top State for Business—its third time at the top of the rankings.

“Listen, there is a reason that Caterpillar moved their hydraulics manufacturing and their engine manufacturing to the state of Texas,” said Gov. Rick Perry in November during the CNBC Republican presidential debate.

In addition to the top spot overall, Texas has the nation’s best Infrastructure, according to our study. It improved to second place for Technology and Innovation, and boasts the third lowest Cost of Living. The state's Workforce improved to seventh best from 14th last year. Access to Capital declined a bit, but Texas still finished in the top 10 (eighth). Perhaps most impressive, the Texas economy recovered from a rare stumble last year, when it finished 14th in the category, improving to fifth this year.

Texas endured a wrenching budget crisis last year. While the state is still not out of the fiscal woods, it managed to emerge with its sterling, triple-A bond rating and stable outlook intact.

The state had to make some sacrifices though, and that hurt in some categories. Texas comes in 26th in Education and 35th in Quality of Life. And while the state held the line on income taxes, the overall tax burden — including property and sales taxes — is high. That hurts Texas in the all-important Cost of Doing Business category, where it comes in 28th.

5 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.