NEW YORK – CNBC has released its annual ranking of the Top States for Business and this year’s top spot goes to Minnesota, a jump from its position at number 6 in 2014. Texas came in a very close second in the rankings, for the third year in a row. And, while Hawaii may be a nice place to visit, apparently you wouldn’t want to do business there, as the Aloha state came in dead last in the rankings.

To compile the rankings, CNBC analysts score all 50 states on more than 60 measures of competitiveness, developed with input from a broad and diverse array of business and policy experts, official government sources and the states themselves. States receive points based on their rankings in each metric. Scores are also weighted based on how the individual states market themselves to potential businesses. Out of a possible 2,500 points, top-ranking Minnesota scored 1,584, for example. 

The categories include areas such as workforce (quality and availability of workers and presence of government-sponsored training programs), cost of doing business (competitiveness of tax climate and availability of state-sponsored incentives), infrastructure (access to transportation and vitality of transportation systems), economy (solid and diverse economy, including job creation and consumer spending), quality of life (livability of state, including crime rate, inclusiveness, quality of health care and environmental quality), technology and innovation (value placed on innovation and new ideas), education (education levels of workforce as well as traditional measures of K–12 education), business friendliness (the freedom that legal and regulatory frameworks provide for business), cost of living (housing, food and energy costs); and access to capital (venture capital investments and small-business lending).

The full rankings and methodology are available here.