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FLORIDA LIST as Best Place to Start a Business
Starting a new business is always a leap of faith, but the odds that faith will be rewarded are better in the Sunshine State.
According to personal finance company WalletHub, Florida is the best place to start a business in 2026. In addition to the overall rank, the state scored high in average number of small businesses, available workforce, average length of work week and cost of living.
The rankings were derived from a comparison of all 50 states across 25“ key indicators of startup success,” according to WalletHub. Other metrics used in the rankings include access to financing, labor costs and office-space affordability.
Under the heading of“ Business Environment” the rankings considered several metrics including growth of average business revenues, five-year business survival rate, industry variety, GDP growth, share of fastest growing firms and a determination of the state’ s digital accessibility.
Access to resources included venture investment amount per capita, higher education assets, share of college-educated population, working-age population growth and financing accessibility.
The business costs measurement calculated labor costs, corporate taxes and cost of living among other statistics.
The WalletHub report focused on three fundamentals for startup success: business environment, access to resources and business costs and weighted a state’ s average costs on a 100-point
scale with 100 representing the most favorable conditions for business creation. Florida’ s score of 56.3 outpaced Texas’ 54.07, California’ s 51 and the 52.32 posted by Georgia.
“ Florida is the best state for starting a business in 2026, boasting the third-most startups per capita and the highest percentage of adults who engage in entrepreneurship,” said WalletHub Analyst Chip Lupo, in the report.“ There are plenty of good reasons why so many people start businesses in Florida, including the fact that it has the 15th-lowest corporate taxes. In addition, Florida’ s working-age population( age16-64) is growing faster than in all but five other states, and the state has the third-highest percentage of workers who say they are enthusiastic about and committed to their work.”
Florida’ s high rank is good news for economic development in the First Coast, said Scott Maynard, senior vice president of economic development and public policy at the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce.
“ In economic development, positive publicity is always good,” Maynard said.“ Businesses have a choice of where to locate and in many cases, one small item can tip the scale to locate elsewhere.”
Maynard said St. Johns County is poised to take advantage of the ranking and said the county is attractive to new business development for a variety of reasons.
“ Many of the new businesses starting in St. Johns County are still chasing the population growth
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