RALEIGH – North Carolina shares the top spot with Georgia in Site Selection’s widely followed Business Climate Ranking for 2020 after ranking just behind that state in 2019.

“For the first time ever, two states claim the top spot — Georgia, which now has an eight-year run in first place, and North Carolina, which missed tying Georgia last year by just two points,” Site Selection says.

North Carolina ranked second in a survey of corporate executives and site selectors, fifth in competitiveness, sixth in projects and third in new firm tax index.

In a separate ranking based on a survey of those corporate executives and site selectors, North Carolina and South Carolina shared second place behind Texas.

A chart from Site Selection’s report on how states ranked.

So what were key factors cited in the survey?

Here they are:

  • Good tax climate, great talent development programs, population growth and competitive incentives
  • Labor, connectivity, access to markets, cost of doing business, business-friendly environment
  • Workforce development and job training support, state incentive policies
  • Access to labor skills, cost of doing business, and state/local economic development infrastructure
  • Business cost factors such as taxes and regulatory environment
  • Labor skills, transportation network, taxes, growth, labor-management relations
  • Ease of doing business, variable operating costs, taxes and incentives
  • Overall site quality, workforce development programming, professional economic development platform, incentives that work
  • Accommodating policies, low tax structure, ample talent

Selection criteria:

“Fifty percent of the overall Business Climate Ranking is based on a survey of corporate site selectors who are asked to rank the states based on their recent experience of locating facilities in them. The other 50% is based on an index of seven criteria: performance in Site Selection’s annual Prosperity Cup ranking (formerly the Competitiveness Award); total Conway Projects Database-compliant facility locations and expansion projects in 2019; total projects in 2019 per capita; total 2020 projects year to date; total 2020 projects year to date per capita; corporate and property tax data from the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Index.”

For more about the report, read details online.