CNBC Rates "Best States for Business" - WA Ties for #16

Just yesterday I wrote about this whole business of rating states. Then along comes another rating (h/t Jocelyn McCabe). This time, CNBC assesses the 50 states on ten criteria: GIve the group credit for a fairly transparent process, although the weighting scheme strikes me as a bit odd. 

Here's how Washington fares:

Category	Score	2009 Rank	2008 Rank
Cost of Doing Business	200	32	35
Workforce	147	35	37
Quality of Life	227	11	9
Economy	130	18	11
Transportation & Infrastructure	92	30	22
Technology & Innovation	208	6	6
Education	96	18	17
Business Friendliness	60	37	34
Access to Capital	46	5	5
Cost of Living	8	34	36
OVERALL	1214	16	18

See what I mean? The ratings are somewhat what you might expect - high on quality of life, technology & innovation, and access to capital; lower on cost of living, cost of doing business, and business friendliness. But then some odd outliers. For example, I thought workforce was supposed to be a strength here. Not according to CNBC.

Moreover, how is it that cost factors appear to be so lightly weighted? One clue might be in this statement.

We weighted the categories based on how frequently each is cited in state economic development marketing materials.

Given that I've never been anywhere that didn't tout it's quality of life, that might explain how we bumped up a bit. Odd.

Oh well. It's more data. And our friends at Shopfloor.org like it.