PHOENIX — Arizona has the fifth-best economy in the nation, but that wasn’t enough to get it out of the bottom third of states in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 Best States list.
The Grand Canyon State ranked No. 37 overall on the list. That was a hop up from its previous position at No. 39 in 2021, but still lower than its ranking at No. 34 in 2019. The Best States report is intended to be released annually, but U.S. News did not update it in 2022 or in 2020 because of data collection issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In all, the report’s authors said they took into consideration thousands of data points in 71 metrics from the past three years, mostly from U.S. Census Bureau and other federal statistics, grouping them into eight categories — health care, education, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections and natural environment.
Breaking down the economy category, U.S. News found Arizona’s best performance to be in growth, where it was No. 4. Factoring into that subcategory were net migration, gross domestic product growth and growth of a young population.
