Forbes' Best Places for Business

Phoenix cracked the top ten for the first time in Forbes magazine's best metropolitan areas for business (at #6); Arizona is down at #15 in the list of best states for business. Tucson ranks #77.

Phoenix scored high for colleges, cost of doing business, culture and leisure, job growth, and net migration; it scored poorly for cost of living, and crime rate, and was somewhere in the middle on educational attainment, cost of doing business, and income growth. Tucson scores better than Phoenix on educational attainment and income growth, but is worse on every other measure.

Arizona was ranked highly for labor costs (#7), economic climate (#1), and growth prospects (#13), poorly for regulatory environment (#36) and quality of life (#43), and in the middle for business costs (#24).

Arizona has four billionaires--John Sperling and his son Peter of the Apollo Group (and University of Phoenix and Kronos Group), Campbell Soup heir Bennett Dorrance, and Arturo Moreno of Outdoor Systems.

An interesting point in the summary is that the United States now has the highest corporate taxes of any OECD nation.

UPDATE (March 9, 2007): Forbes has updated its billionaire list for 2007, and there are no changes for Arizona--the same four Arizonans are billionaires, with none dropping off the list and no new ones showing up. Bennett Dorrance is at #432, Arturo Moreno, John Sperling, and Peter Sperling are all tied at #799. Last year the list was much smaller--Bennett Dorrance was at #153, John and Peter Sperling were tied at #297, and Arturo Moreno was at #354.