Another year, another laughable Site Selection magazine ranking.
The Governor’s office is yet again touting Site Selection magazine’s ranking North Carolina as having the “top business climate.”
Gov. Bev Perdue announced today that North Carolina ranked as the nation’s “Top Business Climate,” according to Site Selection magazine. It is the tenth time in the last 12 years the state has taken the top honor in the annual ranking by Site Selection, one of the nation’s premier economic development magazines.
“North Carolina is a great place to do business and a place where companies and their employees can thrive,” said Gov. Perdue.
Just how out of touch is the lame duck Governor? If NC is such a great place to do business, it must be a very well kept secret given our unemployment rate continues to be fifth highest in the nation. Apparently, the ranking criteria for Site Selection doesn’t include people actually having jobs.
The Site Selection ranking has become a running joke, as far back as 2003 John Hood of the Locke Foundation was calling it out as a “pretty sorry ranking system.” Four years ago I examined the Site Selection criteria, and it basically amounts to crowning the nation’s corporate welfare queen.
It is also ironic that the N&O dutifully reports the Site Selection ranking on the same day they run an op-ed highlighting how NC’s poverty rate has rapidly climbed and surpassed a dozen other states in the last eleven years – a time frame in which NC has had the best “business climate” according to Site Selection. To their credit, however, even the N&O seems to be questioning how serious we should take some of these magazine “business climate” rankings. As they put it:
The ranking is yet another example of how North Carolina continues to pile up accolades about its economic competitiveness even while it struggles to create the necessary jobs to bring down its unemployment rate.
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