Top 10 Best & Worst States by Industry

While state rankings by industry tended to mirror overall rankings (Texas and Florida generally at the top, and New York and California at the bottom), in certain industries, real growth seems to belie the statistics.

This is particularly true in three coastal entrepreneurial hubs—the New York City Tri-State area, the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California.

Manhattan (and even Brooklyn), with its primacy in finance and marketing, and Silicon Valley, with its digital dominance, are so powerful that they draw site decisions despite
their states’ business negatives. And now New York City and California are emerging as engines for other kinds of entrepreneurship. Better-for-you food and beverage startups, for instance, are proliferating in those places.