RICHMOND, Va. — It's become a point of pride for the leader of any state: where are you in CNBC's America's Top States for Business rankings?
This year Virginia lost the top spot to North Carolina, falling to fourth, its lowest ranking since 2018.
Before you dismiss the CNBC rankings as clickbait, consider state leaders and more importantly, the business community take them seriously.
The rankings are comprised of some 135 metrics across 10 categories, but by far the most important is the "economy," which would include the unemployment rate and sales prospects.
That's where CNBC says Virginia has been hurt badly by the Trump administration's federal job cuts.
With some 300,000 federal employees and contractors, Virginia is disproportionately impacted by those cuts.
And the losses have a compounding effect in their local communities as far as declining spending on leisure activities or retail goods.
Governor Youngkin, who has said he supports the cuts, says his plan to transition workers will soften the blow while some economists remain skeptical.
As for the CNBC ranking, Youngkin insists Virginia is still the best state in which to do business
In a statement posted to X he said:
"CNBC's new methodology this year is thrown off by a new subjective metric that mistakenly ascribes substantial risk to Virginia from the federal government's presence in the Commonwealth.
"CNBC fails to recognize that our private sector growth has been at record levels, with $121 billion in business investment committed and record job growth, with 270,000 more Virginians working and roughly 200,000 open and unfilled jobs.
"This has driven 4 straight years of record surpluses."
As for the gubernatorial candidates, Republican Winsome Earl-Sears through spokesman Peyton Vogel, does not fault the formula but rather Democrats at the GA.
"This frighteningly is a harbinger of things to come if Democrats continue to stand in the way of smart economic policies that foster growth and opportunity. Our competitive advantage nationally has already been weakened with liberal control in the general assembly. It'll be hard-working Virginians who pay the price if Abigail Spanberger is governor," Vogel wrote.
As for Spanberger, the Democrat says a governor should find a way to work with legislators.
"That means ensuring that we continue to strengthen public education," Spanberger said. "That means that we ensure that we are bringing investment to Virginia, that we are creating a workforce that will be a clear point of attraction for businesses and investment to come to Virginia. That means really working on cost-of-living issues, whether it's in healthcare or in housing. So that next year, when CNBC is out and about evaluating states that our commonwealth can again rise to number one. Yes, ultimately, the governor is a driving force on this, but we need a governor who doesn't just want to blame the General Assembly but actually wants to work with them to put us back in that number one spot."
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