Saturday, October 24, 2026
Hawai'i Free Press

Current Articles | Archives | Search

Thursday, July 12, 2018

CNBC: America's Top States for Business -- Hawaii 47th

By Selected News Articles @ 3:40 AM :: 6027 Views
 

America's Top States for Business 2018

A scorecard on state economic climate

From CNBC, July 10, 2018

We score all 50 states on more than 60 measures of competitiveness, developed with input from a broad and diverse array of business and policy experts, official government sources, the CNBC Global CFO Council, YPO and the states themselves.

States receive points based on their rankings in each metric. Then we separate those metrics into 10 broad categories, weighted based on how frequently each is used as a selling point in state economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves….

read … Full report

47. Hawaii

The Aloha State gets high marks for its quality of life, but the cost of living here is high.

Category

Score

2018 Rank

2017 Rank

Grade

Workforce 148 48 48 D-
Infrastructure 173 40 40 D+
Cost of Doing Business 70 49 50 F
Economy 134 33 35 (Tie) C-
Quality of Life 264 2 1 A+
Technology & Innovation 63 42 45 F
Education 94 31 30 (Tie) C-
Business Friendliness 37 43 47 (Tie) D-
Access to Capital 22 42 41 (Tie) F
Cost of Living 1 50 50 F
Overall 1006 47 49 -

 

Economic Profile

  • Governor: David Ige, Democrat
  • Population: 1,427,538
  • GDP growth (Q4 2017): 2.0 percent
  • Unemployment rate (May 2018): 2.0 percent
  • Top corporate tax rate: 6.4 percent
  • Top individual income tax rate: 11 percent
  • Gasoline tax: 46.92 cents/gallon
  • Bond rating: (Moody's/S&P): Aa1, stable/AA+, stable
  • Major private employers: Bank of Hawaii, Corp., Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.

Economic profile sources: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federation of Tax Administrators, American Petroleum Institute (excluding 18.40 cent/gallon federal tax), Moody's Investor Service, S&P Global Market Intelligence

Comments