The U.S. News and World Report put out annual state rankings that get more and more sophisticated as the years go on. This year they gathered a TON of data and metrics from many many different facets to have a robust understanding of how states rank against each other in the US. According to the study they literally used thousands of markers for each state.

They dove into data points and metrics based on these overarching points : health care, economy, education, opportunity, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections, and natural environment. They really looked at just about everything. Before starting the study they polled what should hold the most weight in the rankings, in other words which metric was the most important to residents and individuals. Health care and education were weighted most heavily, based off of the findings.

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Idaho soared in Economy (3rd place) Fiscal Stability (4th place). Idaho scored 10th for both infrastructure and crime and corrections categories. 12th place for natural environment (clearly they have not explored enough here.) Idaho was midrange for Heath Care and opportunity both with a 24 ranking. The category we did worst in with a 29 is education.

The top ten ranked states were as follows:

1 - Washington

2 - Minnesota

3 - Utah

4 - New Hampshire

5 - Idaho

6 - Nebraska

7 - Virginia

8 -  Wisconsin

9 - Massachusetts

10 - Florida

We know that Washington (#1) and Utah (#3) did well, but how did our other neighboring states do? Oregon ranked #22, Nevada ranked fairly low with a 37. Montana came in at #33 and Wyoming came in at #35.

So now that we know Idaho is at the top and how our neighboring states did, lets look at where not to move, aka the bottom 5 states in rankings.

46 - Alabama

47 - West Virginia

48 - New Mexico

49 - Mississippi

50 - Louisiana - last place :(

 

THESE ARE THE HIGHEST-PAYING JOBS IN BOISE

 

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