I Am Proud To Live In Virginia....Tops List Of Business Friendly States (Forbes Rating)

I live in Virginia, i blog from Virginia. Became so excited with the Forbes National Rating .
Please, read below what they published about the Common Wealth State of Virginia.

"Our study looks at six important factors for businesses: costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. Virginia is the only state to rank in the top five in four areas—only missing on costs and growth prospects.

Virginia ranks first among the states in the regulatory category because of its business-friendly government policies and strong incentive offerings. The tort system is one of the best in the country for businesses, according to the Mercatus Center’s report “Freedom in the 50 States.” Virginia is also one of 24 right-to-work states, which explains why only 4.4% of its workers are in unions — fifth lowest in the U.S.

The Old Dominion State ranks second in an annual study by Park Ridge, Ill.-based Pollina Corporate Real Estate that measures states’ economic development programs and departments. “Virginia’s flexible incentive programs can be adapted to meet the needs of businesses across different industries,” says the study’s author Brent Pollina.

“We don’t lead with incentives, but we do recognize that we can use them to level the playing field,” says Virginia Economic Development Partnership CEO Martin Briley. He says that only 15% of corporate expansion or relocation deals over the last 10 years in Virginia have included tax incentive programs, but they skew toward larger companies as these deals created 40% of the new jobs.

Technology companies have been busy expanding in Virginia to take advantage of the largest concentration of high-tech workers in the U.S. (9.8% of the state’s private sector workforce is in tech, according to TechAmerica Foundation’s annual Cyberstates report). Amazon.com has added roughly 2,000 jobs in the area over the past two years for two distribution centers and its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services.Microsoft has invested $1 billion to build and expand a data center in southern Virginia.

Virginia’s $446 billion economy held up better than most states during the Great Recession thanks in part to spending by the federal government. But the state has a diverse economy with strengths in bioscience, logistics, manufacturing and technology. There are 31 companies (public and private) with more $3 billion in sales headquartered in Virginia, the seventh largest concentration of big companies of any state in the Union.  The corporate giants based in Virginia include Altria Group, Capital One Financial and General Dynamics.

However, it is hardly all clear sailing for Virginia. It faces potentially the biggest fallout of any state from sequestration and cuts in federal spending. Roughly 30% of Virginia’s economy is tied to the federal government, according to Briley, and the state is the leader in Department of Defense contracts. But Briley expects the private sector to “fill in the gaps” on any government cutbacks. “The diversity of the economy is quite huge, so we will be able to absorb anything that comes down the line,” he says.

VEDP launched a $2 million “Going Global” program last month to help defense contractors in Virginia pitch their expertise to customers overseas. Virginia-based defense firms like General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman NOC -0.22% don’t need VEDP’s help with foreign governments. They already have large international operations and expertise, but the program can help smaller defense players that are heavily reliant on the U.S. government.