Colorado Among Top States For Businesses: Ranking

ACROSS COLORADO — If you ever thought about starting a business in Colorado, a new ranking says you might be in the right place.

CNBC this week released its annual ranking of top states for business, which looks at how well Colorado and other states are doing in attracting and fostering business ownership and operations.

Colorado ranked among the best, coming in at No. 8 out of 50 states.

To rank this year’s top states for business, CNBC scored all 50 states on 85 different metrics in 10 categories. Categories ranged from access to capital to the cost of doing business to cost of living.

This year, CNBC added a new category for life, health and inclusion, which replaced quality of life in order to include new metrics on every state’s battle against COVID-19, health care in general, and the corporate push for inclusiveness.

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Each category was assigned a weight based on how hard states are pushing it in their economic development marketing. CNBC determined that by analyzing every state’s economic development website. If, for example, more states are pitching their low business costs, Cost of Doing Business carries more possible points.

In the end, states could earn a maximum of 2,500 points across the 10 categories. The states with the most points are America’s top states for business.

Read more about CNBC’s methodology to determine 2021’s top states for business.

Colorado received scores in all 10 categories. Here’s how our state fared in each one:

Cost of doing business

• Score: 154
• Grade: D+

Infrastructure

• Score: 198
• Grade: C+

Life, health and inclusion

• Score: 232
• Grade: B-

Workforce

• Score: 245
• Grade: A

Economy

• Score: 164
• Grade: B+

Business friendliness

• Score: 96
• Grade: C

Access to capital

• Score: 122
• Grade: B

Technology and innovation

• Score: 127
• Grade: A-

Education

• Score: 76
• Grade: C+

Cost of living

• Score: 26
• Grade: D+