It’s Time to Rethink ‘Quality of Life’

North Carolina unseated Georgia and its eight-year hold on first place in our annual ranking of state business climates this year. It was a race to the finish following last year’s contest, in which the two Southeastern powerhouses tied for the top spot. Both states had remarkable project activity in 2020 and this year, demonstrating that the same location attributes that attracted capital investment in life sciences, electric vehicles and components, logistics, data centers, e-commerce and other booming sectors were at work during the pandemic as were before it. 

Noting Georgia’s second-place finish in 2021, Governor Brian Kemp told me in an interview for a sister publication that while first place would have been great once again, he’s happy the Peach State is in the top five. Hopefully, the governors of Texas, Ohio and Indiana — completing this year’s top five — feel the same way. They know as well as we do that there’s no guarantee of a first-place finish. It’s about what our project data tell us and input from surveys of site selectors who provide a splash of subjectivity.

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