DEPARTMENT OF COUNTER-INTUITIVE STATISTICS: Yesterday Don Iannone linked to this chart in the March edition of Site Selection. It's a state-by-state comparison of new corporate facility locations and expansions from 2002 through 2004. Guess which state ranked...

-- fourth in location of new manufacturing facilities (256 projects)
-- first in manufacturing facility expansions (714 projects), and
-- fifth in location of other new corporate facilities ("offices, headquarters, distribution centers, research and development facilities, speculative offices, speculative industrial buildings, mixed-use facilities and hotels" -- 879 projects)?

Why, yes, it's Ohio... the same state that lost 60,000 jobs over those same three years (December 2001 to December 2004) while the nation was adding nearly 1.7 million.

So contrary to what we keep hearing about our "unfriendly business climate", Ohio actually seems to have been very attractive to corporate decision-makers compared to other states. Gee, they can't be all that worried about our tax system, can they?

Yet we remain at the bottom of the heap in net job creation. Very mysterious.
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