U.S. News says Washington is the best state in America. Of course it is—it’s home. But from a public policy standpoint, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.

Opportunity Washington wrote about the U.S. News rankings here, noting that there’s “an inevitable subjectivity to weighting and selection of metrics” in rankings like this. Indeed, the Opportunity Washington Scorecard and Washington Roundtable’s Benchmarks for a Better Washington show that Washington could improve in several areas.

The table below shows how U.S. News ranks Washington in various categories, in order of the weight each category is given in the overall ranking.

Some interesting underlying points:

• The Economy category has sub-rankings for business environment (Washington ranks 3^rd), employment (20^th), and growth (1^st). The business environment subcategory includes entrepreneurship (Washington ranks 11^th), patent creation (3^rd), low tax burden (15^th), top company headquarters (26^th), and venture capital (5^th). For tax burden, U.S. News uses total state and local taxes as a share of state income.
• The Infrastructure category has sub-rankings for energy (Washington ranks 2^nd), internet access (3^rd), and transportation (12^th). The energy subcategory includes electricity price (Washington ranks 3^rd), power grid reliability (36^th), and renewable energy usage (2^nd). The transportation subcategory includes commute time (Washington ranks 42^nd), public transit usage (4^th), road quality (37^th), and bridge quality (9^th).
• The Fiscal Stability category has sub-rankings for long-term (Washington ranks 19^th) and short-term (25^th). The long-term subcategory includes credit ratings and pension fund liability and the short-term subcategory includes budget balancing and liquidity. The data behind these rankings (except the credit ratings) comes from the Mercatus Center’s State Fiscal Rankings report (we wrote about it in a guest post for Opportunity Washington here.)

Meanwhile, the Opportunity Washington Scorecard ranks the states on three priorities: Achieve (education quality and outcomes), Connect (transportation reliability and efficiency), and Employ (economic vitality). Washington ranks 22^nd overall, 18^th on Achieve, 39^th on Connect, and 21^st on Employ. Similarly, the Washington Roundtable’s Benchmarks for a Better Washington shows where Washington ranks on 13 metrics in education, transportation, business costs, and growth and innovation.

Overall, the U.S. News ranking includes many of the metrics used in the Benchmarks and Scorecard, but Washington’s ranking on business environment by U.S. News seems too high. For example, the tax burden measure it uses is total state and local taxes, not taxes paid by business specifically. (As we wrote earlier this year, Washington’s business tax burden is high.) The U.S. News business environment ranking also doesn’t consider Washington’s high unemployment insurance tax rates or workers’ compensation benefits paid (which are part of the Benchmarks).