Gov. Bev Perdue on Oct. 14 announced Forbes magazine is ranking North Carolina as the 3rd Best State for Business in America. North Carolina improved from last year’s Forbes ranking of fifth. In addition, the Governor announced that recent statistics from the Federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics show North Carolina is the 3rd best state for declining unemployment and 4th in the nation for job creation.

"This shows that the hard work of the past year has paid off -- our investments in education to build the workforce of tomorrow, policies that create a more business-friendly climate and our aggressive recruiting," said Gov. Bev Perdue. "When I took office, I pledged to take any meeting and make any call to bring jobs to this state. There’s nothing I love more than convincing a corporate executive of what a great place this is to live and work."

In the Forbes rankings, North Carolina scored third in Business Costs and Regulatory Environment and ninth in Growth Prospect. Forbes scored the states on six measures including business cost, labor supply, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospect and quality of life.

While Perdue acknowledged the need to go further in job growth, she noted four indicators that hint at North Carolina’s economic recovery:

• A decline in unemployment from 11.1 percent in January to 9.7 percent now;
• Corporate profits up 10 percent;
• A climb to 5th in the nation for personal income growth since June 2009; and
• The stabilization of the construction and manufacturing industries, which are no longer losing jobs.

In addition to some 36,700 jobs created in the last 12 months, Gov. Perdue and her team at the Department of Commerce have secured commitments for 30,000 new jobs since last year and $5.6 billion in investments.

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Below are the rankings for the top ten states. See the full rankings for all states.

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