...Fraser found that the top five states for economic freedom are Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The worst five are West Virginia, Alaska, California, and Vermont, with New York placing last.
...With the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s state employment report for October on Nov. 20, it’s possible to look at the best and worst states as far as their job performance during a particularly trying time.
The freest five states have a combined population of 67.2 million people, with 24.3 million workers in the private sector as of October. Some 62.1 million people live in the least-free five states, with 22 million working in the private sector.
Over the past 12 months, the freest five states have seen a 4.4% contraction in their private sector employment. Tennessee saw the smallest loss of jobs at 3.5%, while New Hampshire experienced the largest loss at 7.9%. The overall loss among the five top states for freedom was 4.4%.
Among the states with high taxes, big governments, and onerous labor laws, New York took the biggest hit to employment with an 11.7% loss, followed closely by Vermont with 10.5%. The loss in private sector employment in the five least-free states was 9.2% since October 2019.
Put another way, had the bottom five states for economic freedom had the same employment performance as the freest five states, they’d have almost 1.2 million more people employed today in the private sector. About 700,000 of those jobs would be in California and about 400,000 in New York....