North Carolina Chamber
Publishes First Annual "State of Business" Report

The North Carolina Chamber, following through with its mission to make sure that our state is among the most competitive in the nation for jobs, has published its first "state of business" report analyzing data collected by the Chamber over the past six months. This report adds to many quality studies of the North Carolina economy. Its focus is to observe how North Carolina stacks up especially in relation to competitor states. Our state Chamber is particularly interested in how the state's business climate stacks up in regard to substantive policy issues currently under discussion by our General Assembly.

Listening to our customers we wanted to learn more about the issues most important to our state's business community. This report closely analyzed how North Carolina ranked in those issues of tax restructuring and business taxation reform, healthcare costs; and legal reform.

"State of Business" Report Explains Two Key
Studies: Annual Competitiveness Index & CEO Poll

Annual Competitiveness Index (ACI):
Strengths and Opportunities of North Carolina's Business Economy

The North Carolina Chamber's first ACI is an initial step to benchmark the state's progress year by year. This work, with research from Dr. Graham Toft of Growth Economics, comprehensively evaluates North Carolina's economic standing on nearly 100 metrics compared with the other 49 states. Other states and countries compete with North Carolina for businesses and jobs. That we know. The question is, how can North Carolina continue to remain competitive and continuously improve so it doesn't fall behind other states that are getting up to speed? The Chamber's first ACI was created to objectively examine where the North Carolina business climate ranks among other states and what this benchmarking signifies for the future.

The ACI shows that North Carolina has great strengths but also has much room for improvement in some key areas. Education, for example has consistently been above the majority of states, and continues to be with a ranking of 10th in the nation. While we are still making progress as a state overall we are not making progress as fast as some competitor states in some other areas. The cost of doing business in North Carolina has steadily risen in recent years. The Competitiveness Index shows that costs have risen for energy, business liability premiums, and medical and malpractice premiums. Therefore, cost-of-doing business issues, such as these present opportunities where state leaders can act to make North Carolina a breakaway state, such as Virginia.

CEO Poll: CEOs Tell Us What Issues Matter Most to Businesses
To form a benchmark for measuring our state's progress over time, the Chamber commissioned its first CEO Poll of business owners and operators. The poll by the nationally known firm of Cole Hargrove Snodgrass & Associates measured how businesspeople felt about productivity, taxes, education, healthcare costs, legal and other issues. In the poll, which asked participants to rank 18 separate issues, owners and operators most frequently cited "lowering taxes" as the most important issue facing North Carolina businesses today, followed by healthcare costs. The majority of North Carolina business owners polled were satisfied with the quality of the North Carolina workforce, which is a huge plus for our state and an indicator that all the work put into education in recent years has paid off to a good extent.

North Carolina's business climate reputation ranks very highly in many sectors nationally, but state business owners and operators think there is room for improvement. Owners are split about evenly on whether the state's business climate is getting better or worse, and it's notable that even more rate it as staying about the same. It's also interesting that, while North Carolina is strongly branded as one of the best states in the country to do business, well over half of the participants (65 percent) disagreed with the statement: "North Carolina has the best business climate in America."

"State of Business" Report
Validates the Chamber's Competitiveness Agenda

North Carolina is well positioned for growth and continued prosperity. It is poised to be a great break away state. However we must act now to reform and modernize policies and practices that drive jobs, capital, and companies out of our states. We must now build a more competitive economy that creates jobs, opportunities, and economic security. Our Chamber’s competitiveness agenda reflects what our customers' concerns as well as what our data identifies as key areas our state needs to improve on.

As we continue to work for businesses this legislative session we are focusing on: making sure that North Carolina has a competitive and fair tax system that stimulates growth and job creation and that does not unduly burden business; finding market-driven solutions to rising healthcare costs for North Carolina businesses to help them manage and lower costs; a fair way to help employees while lowering transaction costs of workers' compensation; legal reform to make the state’s legal system faster, fairer, and more predictable; increase our competitiveness, which has slipped, by lowering the cost of doing business in the state; promoting policies that help businesses manage increasing energy costs; and implementing effective policies that provide for a well-prepared workforce for employers.