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These states are America's worst for quality of life in 2025
- nine_zeros 1y ago[flagged]
- charcircuit 1y agoBecause the grading rubric is designed against the values of the people there.
- defrost 1y agoYou're saying we shouldn't judge those who enjoy higher levels of domestic violence? Just like in the rest of the country, violent crime in Oklahoma has been trending gradually lower in recent years. But at roughly 418 offenses per 100,000 people in 2023, the Sooner State’s violent crime rate is the 14th highest in the country, according to FBI statistics. Of particular concern is a sharp rise in domestic violence homicides, which State Attorney General Gentner Drummond recently called an “epidemic.”
- charcircuit 1y ago[flagged]
- hobs 1y agoAnd we're saying that the obvious truth is it has little to do with abortion in the way they rank things - that kind of stuff is basically 10% of the rankings https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/how-we-are-choosing-americas-top-states-for-business-in-2025.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/how-we-are-choosing-americas... -
- charcircuit 1y ago>that kind of stuff is basically 10% of the rankings https://www.cnbc.com/20 https://www.cnbc.com/20 This HN thread is specifically about the quality of life metric. The link you gave is not breaking down the 10.6% quality of life metric as far as I can tell.
- bigbacaloa 1y ago[dead]
- selectodude 1y agoValues such as access to food and being able to go to a doctor.
- darth_avocado 1y agoAt some point if your values don’t align with healthcare, worker protections and childcare (which all of these states seem to be graded negatively on), it’s not the rubric.
- brazzy 1y agoThey value violent crime?
- hobs 1y agoEconomy Infrastructure Workforce Cost of Doing Business Business Friendliness Quality of Life - specifically With workers in short supply, companies are seeking to locate in states that can attract a broad array of talent. That makes quality of life an economic imperative. We rate the states on livability factors like per capita crime rates, environmental quality, and health care. The list goes on, but almost none of these are "against the values of the people there" unless their values are making less money and getting screwed over.
- smcin 1y agoJumbling social, economic and environmental considerations [0] into one overall score seems like a terrible methodology, and politicized. Why not just rate them on three (or more) separate scores? If we did this on a country level, we'd similarly get inaccurate overall scores for UAE, Qatar and Singapore (or HK SAR or Macau). Also this methodology is very much for employers not people in general, since it weights infrastructure/power generation (16.2%), way more than cost-of-living/ affordability of housing (2.4%). [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/how-we-are-choosing-americas-top-states-for-business-in-2025.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/how-we-are-choosing-americas...
- PeterStuer 1y ago[flagged]
- refurb 1y agoPretty sure the author of this study made sure of it based on the methodology used.
- trod1234 1y ago[flagged]
- dlcarrier 1y agoGood catch. From the methodology link, this is the only description of how the states in the article are ordered: We rate the states on livability factors like per capita crime rates, environmental quality, and health care. With studies showing that childcare is one of the main obstacles to employees entering the workforce, we consider the availability and affordability of qualified facilities. We look at worker protections including livable wage policies, paid leave, and rights to organize. We look at inclusiveness in state laws, including protections against discrimination of all kinds, as well as voting rights and secure election systems. And with surveys showing a sizeable percentage of younger workers would not live in a state that bans abortion, we factor reproductive rights in this category as well. Out of over ten metrics listed, only one or maybe two are quantitative analysis of what a resident might be exposed to. The rest are an analysis of the states' policies. From that methodology, the expected result would be a direct correlation to which political party dominates, regardless of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the parties' policies. The article is ranking which states employers should not consider moving to, and matching the political preferences of employees is well worth considering, but this is a very roundabout way of presenting it, and calling it a quality of life ranking is inaccurate. Also, the variation within a state can be significant, so any business looking to relocate would get much more useful information by comparing between cities or counties, regardless of the state.
- sMarsIntruder 1y agoCNBC’s model puts hefty weight on social-policy scores (abortion, LGBTQ protections, worker rules) and only a light touch on nuts-and-bolts stuff like housing costs, taxes, and job growth. If those social factors top your list, the rankings make sense; if you care more about affordability or wages, the picture flips.
- ethan_smith 1y agoCNBC's methodology assigns 15% weight to "Life, Health and Inclusion" (social policies) versus 5% for "Cost of Living" and 15% for "Economy" - the full breakdown is available in their methodology document.
- sMarsIntruder 1y agoI read that, but you can see a common factor and probably bias just by reading the descriptions and photos used. I understand that people have opinions and my comment goes against this community, but this is what people with common sense can notice.
- dlcarrier 1y agoThe article has a confusing link to their methodology section. The article itself is about their "Quality of Life" ranking, which is weighted into (at 10.6%) their "Top States for Business" ranking. The methodology link in the article jumps to the "Quality of Life" section within the "Top States for Business", ranking, but the other "Top States for Business" weights aren't considered in the "Quality of Life" ranking given in the article. If you only look at just the "Quality of Life" methodology you'll see that it's— much worse than you were thinking. There's no weights given, but of more than ten metrics considered, it looks like eight or nine of them are purely based on policy, with almost no nuts-and-bolts consideration.
- stogot 1y agoIt’s a trash article based on cherry picked data that likely fit the bias of the author. You can immediately tell what those biases are by looking at the states picked & the reasons why
- smcin 1y ago> 2025′s worst state for quality of life: Tennessee If you take statewide averages, yes. But Williamson County, TN is the US's 7th richest, according to Forbes magazine's annual rankings, with a median income of $104,367 [0]. [It also has the lowest violent crime rate of TN counties [1]]. > "The fastest growing county in Tennessee, over half of the 489,250 residents are college educated. The biggest employers in the county are Community Health Systems Inc., United Healthcare and Nissan North America. Williamson County attracts new business with low costs— it has the lowest county tax in the Nashville area, no state income tax and the Nashville area has a 4% lower cost of living than the national average," Forbes wrote. [0]: https://patch.com/tennessee/franklin/williamson-county-nations-7th-richest-forbes https://patch.com/tennessee/franklin/williamson-county-natio... [1]: https://mtsusidelines.com/2024/04/11/crime-rates-in-tennessees-10-biggest-cities-ranked/ https://mtsusidelines.com/2024/04/11/crime-rates-in-tennesse...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bigbacaloa 1y ago[dead]
- smcin 1y agoMemphis, TN (Shelby County) has the highest homicide rate in the entire country. Why is it in any way meaningful to lump that in with unrelated small cities and counties in TN? (any more than including/excluding East Hammond, IN's gun sales in Chicago metro stats?) To @bigbacalaoa: The city of Franklin and Williamson County, TN are not Nashville; they're separate things in the Nashville metropolitan area. So your analogy to neighborhoods of Sao Paolo is offbase.
- dlcarrier 1y agoRanking crime rates by city or county, instead of by state, reverses the correlation between crime rates and politics: https://manhattan.institute/article/red-vs-blue-crime-debate-and-the-limits-of-empirical-social-science https://manhattan.institute/article/red-vs-blue-crime-debate... That article is from a conservative organization, and local crime rates have a much larger impact on individuals than state crime rates, so they could make a "we're right and you're wrong" claim by focusing on the more pertinent data, but instead they came to an even better conclusion: The correlation is so weak that it's easy to manipulate into any outcome, so it's not worth considering. A very small correlation to a specific category may be statistically significant, but it's what doctors call clinically insignificant, which is to say it doesn't make enough of a difference to bother with.
- travisgriggs 1y agoI wondered about the Utah rankings. There are a lot stay at home parents in the population there. And a lot of multi family and generational sharing. I wondered if those affected the low child care center numbers. Otherwise, the rest resonated.
- pfannkuchen 1y ago> And the state is doing poorly in meeting their needs. Utah ranks 48th in licensed child care centers per capita I imagine LDS people probably have stay at home mothers at a vastly higher rate than the general population? If so then this stat says nothing about whether the state is meeting their needs.
- dlcarrier 1y agoAlso, Utah was ranked #1, for quality of life, by US News: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings Something's definitely fishy here. Neither US News nor CNBC have very good methodology, but US News seems to have put a bit more work into finding metrics that directly represent quality of life, instead of just analyzing regulations, and assuming their effects on quality of life.
- pfannkuchen 1y agoIt’s pretty weird that stories with glaring methodological flaws are just discussed by the public as if they are plausibly correct. I want a news source that I can trust to vet this sort of thing, but the closest I can get is full of crazed ideologues. But I also don’t want them to call out that it’s wrong. I just want them to pass the information on to me assuming I wouldn’t care to even know that this article exists, why would I care to read what the flaws are, etc
- thunky 1y ago> I want a news source that I can trust to vet this sort of thing Then stay away from ranked lists like this. They are national enquirer level news. There's just no way to boil these topics down to a single number that has any value.
- dlcarrier 1y agoI think putting up with the occasional crazed ideologies is worth it, if it means the rest of the articles acknowledge politicians are usually wrong, regardless of the party. That's why I read articles from the Reason Foundation (https://reason.com/latest/ https://reason.com/latest/), unless there's something up their alley, like politician legalizing hard drugs for sex workers, or something crazy like that, they have no issue with calling politicians out on their nonsense, regardless of the party. The next best option is finding a news source that at least has journalists with competing viewpoints. It does mean for every article calling out nonsense, you'll get another one supporting it, but at least they aren't ignoring any issues they find inconvenient. The best I've found for this is The Hill. (https://thehill.com/news/ https://thehill.com/news/) Sure, one of their contributors took CNBC at their word on the quality of life ranking (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5402709-vermont-quality-life-ranking-cnbc/ https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5402709-vermont-qua...) with no thought put into whether analyzing policy is an effective metric of actual life quality, but they also publish articles from contributors that call out news sources for similar rhetoric.
- jandrewrogers 1y agoAny model that places Utah among the worst States for quality of life in the US discredits itself. No serious person could arrive at that conclusion. It boggles my mind that anyone would even try to sell that.
- smcin 1y agoIn particular I'm trying to demystify the supposed Utah childcare shortage: I suspect Utah has a very high rate of informal or unlicensed childcare, or exchanges between part-time working mothers, of which Utah has a lot [0]. So again there's much more behind the official stats than a mere headcount of licensed childcare providers. From Gemini + other article: "In Utah, unlicensed child care providers can care for up to eight [previously six, prior to 2024 HB153] children in their home without needing to be licensed. This means they are not required to have mandatory training, background checks, or undergo safety oversight, which raises concerns about the quality and safety of care provided. Voices for Utah Children says it is the second-highest limit in the nation for unregulated childcare." [0]: https://universe.byu.edu/2019/01/14/how-utahs-child-care-challenges-impact-working-parents-1/ https://universe.byu.edu/2019/01/14/how-utahs-child-care-cha...
- smcin 1y agoSince different US states regulate childcare very differently, it seems silly to compare "licensed childcare headcount" across states as if it was some invariant. And "unlicensed childcare" could merely mean "potentially very high quality childcare, just involving <8 children and the person doesn't have a license, or in a part-time/reciprocal arrangement". Whereas in other states it could be much worse. Maybe it's a less meaningless methodology to try to estimate demand vs availability by looking at childcare prices in a locality normalized by per-capita income?
- readthenotes1 1y agoI understand people are questioning the methodology used to create the rankings, but what if this is a false flag operation where a subversive conservative tried to put out a piece reaffirming progressive beliefs that these places are too squalid to survive?
- IAmBroom 1y ago> the Sooner State’s violent crime rate is the 14th highest in the country OK, so that means the 13 higher-crime states are on this list, too, right? If that's literally the only reason TFA lists Oklahoma... Sloppy ink-stabbing. A more experienced polemicist would have said "among the highest".
- RickJWagner 1y agoHaving lived in 8 states, red and blue, big and small, I find this article deeply flawed.
- spacemadness 1y ago“American business is still in the grips of a serious lack of skilled employees.” The entire article was invalidated in one sentence in their intro.