U.S. News & World Report recently released its annual Best States analysis, and not much has changed for the Great Lakes State.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan remains among the bottom 10 in the nation, well behind all states in the Midwest.
“Some states shine in health care. Some soar in education. Some excel in both – or in much more,” according to the news site. “The Best States rankings by U.S. News draw on thousands of data points to measure how well states perform for their citizens.”
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The rankings include a breakdown by categories: health care, crime, economy, education, fiscal stability, infrastructure, natural environment and opportunity.
Michigan did not “shine,” “soar,” or “excel” in any of them.
Overall, the state ranked 42nd in the U.S. for the second consecutive year, making no progress after slipping one spot from 41st in 2023.
For the second consecutive year, Michigan ranked in the bottom half of states for all categories, with its top-ranked category of opportunity in 27th place.
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The news site ranked Michigan 28th for the economy, 29th for health care, 30th for the natural environment, 32nd for fiscal stability, 38th for crime and corrections, and 41st for education and infrastructure.
The only states to perform worse were Oklahoma, Alabama, Alaska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico and Louisiana. The top 10 states included Utah in 1st, followed by New Hampshire, Nebraska, Minnesota, Idaho, Iowa, Vermont, Washington, Florida, and Massachusetts.
“More weight was accorded to some categories than others, based on a survey of what matters most to people,” according to U.S. News & World Report. “Health care and education were weighted most heavily. Then came state economies, infrastructure, and the opportunities states offer their citizens. Fiscal stability followed closely in weighting, followed by measures of crime and corrections and a state’s natural environment.”
For Michigan’s worst categories, data shows students graduate college with more debt than the national average, the state’s high school graduation rate is nearly five percentage points below average, and students perform worse on national math tests than students in other states. Michigan also uses much less renewable energy than most states and has more roads in poor condition.
The results are not unsurprising to Michiganders, who have lived through a steady decline in virtually all important metrics over the last six years.
A different study of the “Best & Worst States for Entrepreneurs in 2025” released in late January showed Michigan tumbled six spots from the prior year’s rankings, coming in as the 41st best state for entrepreneurs.
Last fall, the personal finance website SmartAsset ranked Michigan ninth among the “Top 10 States Wealthy Millennials Are Moving Out Of” based on IRS data from “high earners” of $200,000 or more aged 26 to 45.
Those results followed a month after a report from Consumer Affairs ranked Michigan 36th overall in its best and worst states analysis, which showed the state fell behind all but four for “quality of life.”
The month before that, the finance website WalletHub dubbed Michiganders “the most financially distressed people in the country.”
“In Q1 2024, Michigan had the most accounts per person in financial distress, meaning accounts where the account holder was temporarily allowed to not make payments due to financial difficulty,” according to the analysis.
“Michigan also had the second-highest increase in the share of people with distressed accounts between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024, at over 70%,” it read. “In addition, the Great Lakes State had the fourth-highest overall share of people with accounts in distress, at 7.9%.”
Similar findings have come from the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging, the United Way’s 2024 United for ALICE report, UM’s Michigan Poverty & Well-being Map, a 2024 Kids Count Data Book, U.S. News & World Report’s “50 Best Places to Live & Retire,” U.S. Census Bureau, and Whitmer’s own Growing Michigan Together Council.
Other reports have detailed Michigan’s significant business losses, falling educational outcomes, deteriorating roads, violent crime, population decline, food insecurity, lagging home sales, sky-high inner city poverty, and other troubling trends, such as per capita income now at “the lowest we’ve ever been.”