For the third year in a row, North Carolina holds the No. 1 spot on Forbes magazine’s Best States for Business ranking. 
North Carolina has ranked in the top five overall for 14 straight years, beginning when Forbes first started ranking all 50 states in 2006.
In an article announcing the 2019 list, Forbes cites North Carolina’s regulatory environment, low business costs, and labor supply as reasons why North Carolina remains on top. The state has a highly educated labor supply, graduating students from 53 colleges and universities including Tier 1 research universities Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State.
Forbes credits North Carolina’s highly educated workers as one of the reasons why companies such as Microsoft, car sales platform Carvana and drug company Pfizer announced plans to invest in North Carolina in 2019.
Read Forbes’ full coverage of its Best States for Business 2019 here.