Alabama is America’s most improved state for business, CNBC says: Here’s why

Alabama is the most improved state in CNBC’s annual business competitiveness study.

The state also ranked 20th best state for business, according to the financial news network’s ranking, soaring 22 places higher than its finish last year.

The move to “most improved” comes after the state vaulted from last place to 14th in net migration of college-educated workers in 2022, based on figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Alabama also surged 20 places in the state’s workforce rank, and is now tied for 24th place with New Hampshire and Wisconsin.

The center of those improved numbers appears to be the Huntsville area, as well as the state’s site readiness programs, which connect prospective companies with shovel-ready sites to build.

CNBC’s new survey ranks the 50 states using 128 different metrics across 10 categories of competitiveness.

Virginia earned the top spot, followed by North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Florida.

The survey looked at how states sell themselves to potential corporate citizens. According to the network, each category is weighted based on how frequently individual states use them as selling points in economic development marketing materials.

“That way, our study ranks the states based on the attributes they use to sell themselves,” the story states.

Infrastructure is the heaviest weighted category. It replaces workforce, which had been the most important for the past ten years.

For workforce, the survey looks at each state’s concentration of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workers and the percentage of workers with college degrees, associate degrees and industry-recognized certificates. We look at which states are most successful in attracting talent at all levels, and at state worker training programs, right to work laws, and worker productivity based on economic output per job.

The survey also looked at quality of life, cost of doing business, technology and innovation, business friendliness, education, access to capital and cost of living.

Alabama got its highest marks on infrastructure, education, business friendliness, cost of living and cost of doing business. Dragging down the score, though were low rankings in access to capital and economy, and an F in quality of life.

Just 27% of Alabama adults aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, the seventh lowest in the country. It also ranked 45th for primary care doctors, No. 49th for dentists and last for mental health providers,