Here’s where SC ranks in terms of business, according to the latest study from CNBC.
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South Carolina is home to many flourishing businesses and is experiencing significant economic growth. But does that mean it’s one of the best states to own a business?
CNBC, a major business news outlet, released its 2026 America’s Top States for Business report earlier this month, ranking each state based on how alluring they are to business owners. This is the 20th year they have released this report.
Here’s where SC compares to other states for business, and how our ranking changed from previous years, according to the report:
SC ranks right next to the middle
SC isn’t considered one of the best states for business, but it’s not one of the worst either. According to the report, the Palmetto State ranks 23rd in the country, almost smack-dab in the middle.
This is a downgrade from last year’s ranking. In 2025, SC ranked 18th in the country for business. Year-over-year, the state’s “Infrastructure”, “Cost of Doing Business”, “Cost of Living” and several other categories’ rankings worsened.
SC fell behind in several areas, such as “Quality of Life” and “Business Friendliness”, but scored well in “Economy” and “Workforce.” Here are all the categories they used to rank SC and how the state fared in each one:
- Infrastructure: 27th
- Economy: 6th
- Workforce: 8th
- Quality of Life: 36th
- Cost of Doing Business: 31st
- Technology & Innovation: 28th
- Business Friendliness: 38th
- Access to Capital: 31st
- Education: 19th
- Cost of Living: 37th
Top 10 states for business
While SC didn’t break the top 10, our northern neighbor ranked among the top three states. Here are the 10 best states for business, according to CNBC:
- Ohio
- North Carolina
- Virginia
- Texas
- Minnesota
- Michigan
- Georgia
- Florida
- Tennessee
- Indiana
Methodology
CNBC has released this report every year since 2007 and has consistently used the same categories to score each state, for the most part.
But because what matters most to business changes from year to year, they re-weight the categories annually to reflect the latest reality for business owners, they said. As a result, infrastructure became the top-weighted category in this year’s report, accounting for nearly 18% of a state’s total score.
Here are the other categories CNBC used to rank each state:
- Economy: 16.6%
- Workforce: 13.8%
- Quality of Life: 11.6%
- Cost of Doing Business: 11.4%
- Technology & Innovation: 9.8%
- Business Friendliness: 9.0%
- Access to Capital: 4.2%
- Education: 4%
- Cost of Living: 2%
For their report, they used dozens of different sources to score states based on each of these categories. You can check out the full list of sources here.
