Top States for Business 2022

2. Washington

Welcome to Washington State sign
Smodj | Istock | Getty Images

Washington Score and Ranking

CATEGORY  2022 SCORE  2022 RANK 2021 RANK  2022 GRADE 
WORKFORCE28247A
INFRASTRUCTURE1872929C-
COST OF DOING BUSINESS1543336C+
ECONOMY268311A
LIFE, HEALTH & INCLUSION23967B+
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION19624A+
BUSINESS FRIENDLINESS893116D+
EDUCATION1031714B
ACCESS TO CAPITAL272039C
COST OF LIVING133838D-
OVERALL155829

Economic Profile

Governor: Jay Inslee, Democrat

Population: 7,738,692

GDP growth (Q1 2022): -3.3%

Unemployment rate (May 2022): 3.9%

Top corporate tax rate: None (levies a gross receipts tax)

Top individual income tax rate: None (has added a 7% capital gains tax on profits that exceed $250,000 per person or married couple from selling capital assets, such as stocks and bonds. Currently being challenged in court.)

Gasoline tax: 49.40 cents/gallon

Bond rating (Moody's/S&P): Aaa, stable/AA+, stable

Economic profile sources: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federation of Tax Administrators, American Petroleum Institute (excluding 18.40 cent/gallon federal tax), Moody's Investor Service, S&P Global Market Intelligence

Correction: Washington ranked 7th for Workforce and 29th for Infrastructure in the 2021 America's Top States for Business rankings. An earlier version of this state profile page misstated those rankings. 

Genesis Fuentes, PhD student, watches a simulated encounter at the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland, where they are developing Virtual Reality in police de-escalation training, in College Park, MD.
These are the 10 states with America's best workers
Charming downtown Middlebury, Vermont.
These 10 states are America’s best places to live in 2022
An engineer inspects a Sapphire Technology Ltd. AMD graphics processing unit (GPU) at the Evobits crypto farm in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2021.
These 10 states are leading America in creating a crypto economy