Financial advice website WalletHub ranked Florida as the top state in the nation to start a business in 2025. Two of Florida’s typical rivals for business, California and New York, ranked 16th and 40th, respectively. Below is an excerpt from their report, which was released earlier today:
“Florida is the best state for starting a business in 2025, boasting the second-most startups per capita and the highest percentage of adults who engage in entrepreneurship. The number of small businesses in the state grew by nearly 16% between 2016 and 2022, the fourth-highest percentage in the country.
There are plenty of good reasons why so many people start businesses in Florida, including the fact that it has the 11th-highest business revenue growth rate and the tenth-lowest corporate taxes.
Given the prevalence of retirees in Florida, you might assume the labor force is dwindling, but the opposite is true. In fact, the working-age population (age 16-64) is growing faster in Florida than in all but six other states. Plus, Florida has the third-highest percentage of workers who say they are enthusiastic about and committed to their work.”
Methodology
In order to determine the best and worst states to start a business, WalletHub compared the 50 states across three key dimensions: 1) Business Environment, 2) Access to Resources and 3) Business Costs.
We evaluated those dimensions using 25 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for new-business creation.
Finally, we determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.
