Don’t Mess With Texas, America’s Top State for Business

When you think of Texas, you probably think of oil, or cattle ranches, or barbecue. But maybe you should be thinking of business.

The lone star state has topped CNBC’s rankings for top states for business, beating out Utah and Virginia to claim the top spot for the third time since the annual study started six years ago.

Using input from groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Competitiveness, CNBC ranks all 50 states on ten metrics:

• Cost of Doing Business
• Workforce
• Quality of Life
• Economy
• Transportation & Infrastructure
• Technology & Innovation
• Education
• Business Friendliness
• Access to Capital
• Cost of Living

For 2012, Texas was No. 1 in transportation and infrastructure, No. 2 in technology and innovation, and No. 3 in cost of living. Its relatively low scores in cost of doing business (28), quality of life (35), and education (26) weren’t enough to offset improvements in the state’s economy, which ranked fifth this year, up from fourteenth last year.

It was a good year for Texas’s major metropolitan areas as well. In Dallas, earnings rose more than 1.5 percent over the course of Q2, for a gain of 2.7 percent over last year. In Houston, wages increased 1 percent in both Q1 and Q2, for a 3 percent year-over-year increase by the middle of 2012.

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