Where Does New York Fall on 2023 Best States List?

It’s time once again for U.S. News & World Reports ranking of the Best States which is when we find out just how New York stacks up against all of the other states.

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In order to come up with its list of the Best States, U.S. News & World Report looked at a variety of metrics to determine which position each of the 50 states would take. The metrics that were studied included health care, economy, education, crime and corrections, and the natural environment. Infrastructure, opportunity, and fiscal stability.

Each of the pre-selected categories was assigned its own weight and that weight was based on the average of data from the course of three years compiled from national surveys which totaled over 70,000 individuals.

According to U.S. News & World Report, the very best state in the United States is Utah, which impressively ranked in the top 20 in seven of the categories. The second-best state in the United States as deemed by U.S. News & World Report is Washington.

At the very bottom of the list of best states is Louisiana where only 33 percent of the population is college educated and the median income is just over $34,000. The second worst state in the United States according to this ranking, is Alaska.

So, where did New York fall on the list of Best States? The Empire State took the 20 spot on the ranking. Although New York ranked impressively high in health care and education with both of those categories tying for 9th in the United States, opportunity and economy are big struggles in the state. New York ranked an embarrassing 49th for the opportunity and an equally embarrassing 45th in the economy.

In New York, nearly 50 percent of residents are college educated and the median income is just about $44,000. New York’s natural environment, think the beautiful Adirondacks and Catskills, helped to launch New York to the number two spot on the categories list for the natural environment. We’ll take it!