Utah Rocks! See Where Beehive State Ranks In New Business Study

November 30th is Small Business Saturday and a new study ranks the most and least friendly states for small businesses.

Bankrate ranked states in several categories, including the robustness of small business activity, availability and quality of labor, business costs, access to capital, infrastructure, and taxes and regulation.

Washington is ranked number one as the most business-friendly state, followed by Utah and Wyoming. Louisiana is the least friendly state for small businesses, followed by Mississippi and Rhode Island.

While the Evergreen State ranked No. 1overall, Utah took the top spot in several of the studied categories, including access to capital and robustness of small business activity.

The other categories were availability and quality of labor, business costs, policy and regulation and infrastructure.

Small businesses aren’t that small in terms of their economic impact. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they employ nearly half of all U.S. workers and account for nearly 44 percent of America’s gross domestic product (GDP).

A recent WalletHub study was very favorable toward Southern Utah. It ranked Cedar City, St. George and Washington City as 1, 2 and 4 (respectively) in a national study for best places to start a small business.

In that study, WalletHub took into account educated workforce, labor costs, average revenue for small businesses and average growth of small businesses -- a category in which St. George and Washington tied for first out of hundreds of towns in the USA.

“The benefits of starting a business in a small city include lower overhead costs, stronger relationships with customers and the potential to become a big fish in a little pond. But there are drawbacks, too. Entrepreneurs who want to build a large professional network aren’t likely to make as many connections in a town with fewer residents. Other restrictions might include limited industry options, a less diverse customer base, and difficulty attracting and keeping top talent,” said one WalletHub analyst.

In order to determine the best small cities in which to start a business, WalletHub compared 1,334 cities across three key dimensions: 1) Business Environment, 2) Access to Resources and 3) Business Costs. For our sample, we chose cities with a population of between 25,000 and 100,000 residents. “City” refers to city proper and excludes the surrounding metro area.