So you say you want to start a business. Don”™t try New Jersey. In a study released today by WalletHub, the Garden State is not the place to try and plant a startup. It ranked in last place.
Nearby Connecticut and New York are also near the bottom of the heap with rankings of 44 and 39, respectively.
The bottom 12 in ascending order are New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maryland, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico and New York.
The very best place to have a startup is North Dakota, according to WalletHub, the Washington, D.C.-based personal finance website. According to recent articles on North Dakota’s economy, its oil boom is propelling its growth. It was ranked No. 1 “best state” by U.S. News & World Report.
Texas, Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Florida, Colorado, Georgia, Missouri and South Dakota round out the top 10.
Plumb the stats a bit more and you will see why Connecticut and New York placed where they did. The Empire State ranked 47th in business costs and the Nutmeg State was 49th. However, when it comes to access to resources, New York and Connecticut ranked high at 6th and 8th. WalletHub used six metrics to assess the resources available to a particular state:
- access to financing;
- venture investment amount per capita;
- human capital as in number of job openings per number of residents;
- higher education that included the average university ranking;
- college-educated population as per bachelor”™s degree or higher; and
- working-age population between 16 and 64.
Also taken into consideration for the study were office space availability and cost; labor costs; corporate, state and local taxes; tax abatements; cost of living; startups per capita; variety of businesses; growth of business revenue; average length of a work week; and average growth in the number of small businesses.
A couple of other snapshots from the study in regard to New York and Connecticut are:
- New York came in 49th for most expensive office space;
- Connecticut was 47th for highest labor costs;
- New York was 23rd and Connecticut 34th in business environment; and
- Connecticut was 4th for the most educated state behind Massachusetts, Colorado and Maryland.
