Two new Maine rankings have come to my attention. Neither bring good news to Mainers.


The first comes from Forbes Magazine from a report titled “The Best States for Business.” There are six categories ranked from 1 (best) to 50 (worst):
Business Costs–45
Labor–26
Regulatory Environment–49
Economic Climate–21
Growth Prospects–48
Quality of Life–21
What’s more disturbing is that in the “Growth Prospects” category, Louisiana was ranked ahead of Maine at 46!
Another ranking by NetworkWorld.com was recently released in an article titled “The Five Worst States for Start-ups.” Yep, you guessed it, Maine is one of them. The article states that “These states have not received any venture capital funding for an IT-related start-ups since January 2004. That’s 10 quarters without any seed funding available to entrepreneurs starting software, hardware, Internet or telecommunications companies.” Not a good start toward diversifying the Maine economy.