ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Forbes once again has New Mexico near the bottom of its annual Best States To Do Business list.
New Mexico ranked 47th in the 2015 ranking, just behind Rhode Island and just ahead of Maine. Mississippi and West Virginia completed the cellar.
Mountain West neighbor Utah topped the list this year.
New Mexico ranked near the bottom for the third year in a row thanks to what Forbes saw asĀ “weak labor supply and lousy current economic climate.” A high crime rate and low test scores, the publication said, drove down the state’s quality-of-life scores.
And, the magazine said, “New Mexico has the worst employment growth in the U.S. over the past five years.”
Forbes’ ranking factored in 40 data points across six main areas: business costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. Business costs, which include labor, energy and taxes, were weighted the most heavily.
The number of millennials as a percent of the population was added as a criteria for the 2015 rankings. “Finding highly educated millenials is top of mind for all of our clients,” Jeff Lessard, who works with Cushman & Wakefield clients on location strategies, said in the accompanying story.
The published rankings don’t show how New Mexico fared in that regard, but they do note the state had a net outmigration of 11,500 people in 2014.
New Mexico’s best scores in the ranking were for business costs at 27th, regulatory environment at 33rd and growth prospects at 34th.
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