Who says energy’s no longer a major driver of the Texas economy?
Bolstered by the rising price of crude oil, the state snagged the No. 1 spot in CNBC’s 2018 ranking of America’s Top States for Business for the first time since 2012.
“The Texas economy remains in a broad-based expansion,” economists Christopher Slijk and Jason Saving of the Dallas Fed told CNBC.
Slijk and Saving also said the state’s energy sector is booming, especially in areas (like the Permian Basin) that are tied to oil and gas.
The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil has been averaging around $65 per barrel this year, up from about $43 two years ago.
Largely because of the energy boom, Texas added more than 350,000 jobs in the last year, CNBC said—or one of every seven jobs created in the country.
Texas finished among the top 10 states in five of the 10 categories CNBC uses to rank all 50 states, including No. 1 rankings in both the Infrastructure and Economy categories. It also came out No. 3 in Access to Capital.
But the state scored poorly in Education, where it was No. 37, and Quality of Life, where it ranked No. 31.
Washington state, Utah, Virginia, and Colorado rounded out CNBC’s top five states for business.
