The Milken Institute recently released its 2005 Cost-of-Doing-Business Index (available online as a 43KB PDF document), which provides a frame of reference for finding out the relative costs of different basic components of business expenses throughout the United States. (HT: Division of Labour.)

Now, the Milken Institute's table is a nice, static display of the relative costs of doing business in the United States, at least as compared to the U.S. national average in each of it's categories. But is that good enough in this day and age? Political Calculations^(TM) believes that data in tables presented online should dance on command, rearranging itself to show the relative rankings of each state for each category listed! We also think that indices built on cost data should include the raw cost information, in case the reader might want to crunch some cost numbers of their own.

That's why Political Calculations has mined the data behind the Milken Institute's 2005 Cost-of-Doing-Business Index (available as a 33KB PDF document) to provide the following dynamic table, in which you may click any of the column headings to rearrange the data in the table according to its ranking within that category (details about each of the categories is provided below the table):

2005 U.S. Cost of Doing Business Index

State	Wage per Employee	Tax Burden	Electricity (cents/kWh)	Industrial Sq. Ft. Cost ($)	Office Sq. Ft. Cost ($)	Overall Index
Alaska	37851	57.0	9.18	12.7	15.0	101.9
Alabama	31561	55.7	5.42	4.0	18.2	85.0
Arkansas	28335	78.8	4.79	3.0	16.1	76.3
Arizona	34738	58.8	6.23	4.1	20.1	93.5
California	41811	68.2	11.02	6.6	25.9	112.5
Colorado	38378	42.5	5.85	4.3	18.1	103.3
Connecticut	47262	64.7	8.96	5.6	22.7	127.2
Delaware	40044	79.8	6.23	4.8	21.1	107.8
Florida	33221	56.2	6.27	5.8	21.7	89.4
Georgia	36160	54.9	5.34	3.7	19.7	97.3
Hawaii	34135	94.8	13.61	13.8	24.8	91.9
Iowa	29922	56.9	5.20	2.8	14.4	80.5
Idaho	28243	70.1	4.86	3.7	14.0	76.0
Illinois	39925	58.4	6.07	5.0	25.5	107.5
Indiana	32735	63.7	5.02	3.9	17.1	88.1
Kansas	31028	62.7	5.52	4.4	18.6	83.5
Kentucky	31382	73.7	4.29	3.3	16.1	84.5
Louisiana	30219	64.4	6.49	3.9	16.9	81.4
Massachusetts	45179	62.3	9.80	6.7	30.7	121.6
Maryland	40110	56.5	5.92	4.8	22.0	107.9
Maine	30267	71.9	8.35	4.0	16.8	81.5
Michigan	38664	74.5	6.26	5.1	18.6	104.1
Minnesota	37797	80.6	5.24	6.4	20.9	101.8
Missouri	33284	51.8	5.14	4.1	18.7	89.6
Mississippi	27078	71.6	5.87	3.5	13.9	72.9
Montana	26830	65.3	5.55	3.4	13.3	72.2
North Carolina	33180	66.4	5.72	3.7	17.6	89.3
North Dakota	27370	61.7	4.80	2.7	12.5	73.7
Nebraska	30456	66.5	4.99	3.6	19.0	82.0
New Hampshire	36519	41.7	9.91	6.0	15.4	98.3
New Jersey	45545	58.4	8.36	7.3	23.4	122.6
New Mexico	30467	80.3	6.15	5.0	15.3	82.0
Nevada	35852	60.8	8.04	5.2	25.0	96.5
New York	46577	62.4	10.03	7.5	34.7	125.4
Ohio	34476	62.6	6.19	3.7	18.0	92.8
Oklahoma	29414	64.9	5.49	3.7	14.7	79.2
Oregon	33844	56.7	5.51	5.1	20.5	91.1
Pennsylvania	36157	61.3	7.10	4.7	21.2	97.3
Rhode Island	35555	66.1	9.53	3.3	19.4	95.7
South Carolina	30325	59.6	5.40	3.2	18.7	81.6
South Dakota	26877	44.7	5.27	2.6	13.8	72.3
Tennessee	32868	53.9	5.48	3.5	17.4	88.5
Texas	36421	45.2	6.56	4.5	18.2	98.0
Utah	30829	65.9	4.69	3.9	19.2	83.0
Virginia	38152	53.8	4.99	4.6	18.7	102.7
Vermont	31166	86.8	9.67	4.8	14.3	83.9
Washington	39283	63.5	5.42	5.3	24.8	105.7
Wisconsin	32779	70.7	5.84	4.8	18.4	88.2
West Virginia	28688	79.8	4.63	3.0	17.5	77.2
Wyoming	29772	86.6	4.70	6.1	11.6	80.2
US Average	37154	61.4	6.56	4.8	19.0	100.0

Definitions of the Categories

Here are the definitions of the various categories, along with their relative weighting in creating the Milken Institute's overall index:

Wage per Employee

Measures the average annual wage per employee in all industries (receives 50% weight).

Tax Burden

Measures the annual state and local tax revenue as a share of personal income as of 2004 (receives 20% weight).

Electricity Cost

Measures the 2003 cost of commercial and industrial electricity cost in cents per kilowatt-hour (receives 15% weight).

Industrial Square Footage Cost

Measures the 2005 cost of renting industrial (warehouse) space on a per square foot basis (receives 10% weight).

Office Square Footage Cost

Measures the 2005 cost of renting office space on a per square foot basis (receives 5% weight).

The overall index applies the weightings for each of the categories above, and measures it against the U.S. average. An index score of 100 indicates that the state is at the U.S. average for the overall cost of doing business. An index score of 125 indicates that the cost of doing business in the state is 25% above the U.S. average. Likewise, a state with an index score of 75 is 25% below the U.S. average.

Labels: business

- posted by Ironman at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Home |