Building a Tableau dashboard to compare economic reputation with quality of life
What Does “Business-Friendly” Actually Measure?
CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business study ranks all 50 states using 138 metrics across 10 weighted categories. These include the economy, workforce, infrastructure, cost of doing business, business friendliness, education, technology and innovation, access to capital, cost of living, and quality of life.
The ranking is designed to reflect the questions a company might ask before expanding into a state: Can it hire qualified workers? Are transportation and digital systems reliable? Are operating costs manageable? Is the economy stable? Will employees want to live there?
Because the categories are weighted, a state can perform very well overall while struggling in one important area. Tennessee illustrates that tension. In 2026, it ranked ninth overall for business but last in CNBC’s quality-of-life category.
That contrast is the focus of my analysis.
Using Tableau, I compare overall business rankings with people-focused results to show where the two measures align and where they sharply diverge. I created this interactive Tableau dashboard to compare state business rankings with measures related to quality of life. Tennessee serves as the central case study, but the dashboard also allows users to explore how the two rankings compare across the United States.
And why is Tennessee so important to me here? Well, it’s where I live and I can honestly say a lot has changed over the last few years. That is what struck my curiosity about the data of why the state has changed so much.
View the interactive dashboard:
Business-Friendly, People-Friendly, or Both? on Tableau Public
Tableau dashboard compares business and quality-of-life rankings across the United States.
The question behind the dashboard
Economic rankings often tell us which states offer favorable conditions for companies. They consider factors such as workforce availability, infrastructure, operating costs, access to capital, and the broader business environment.
Those measures are valuable, but they do not necessarily answer another important question:
What is it like to live there?
A state may attract companies through low costs and favorable regulations while struggling in areas that directly affect residents. Conversely, a state with a strong quality of life may be expensive or more challenging for businesses to operate in.
Rather than treating either ranking as the definitive answer, I wanted to place them next to each other.
The goal was to examine three possibilities:
- States that perform well for business
- States that perform well for residents
- States that manage to perform well in both
That third category is where things become more interesting. It is easy to win a ranking when the ranking only asks one kind of question.
Why Tennessee?
Tennessee was a useful focus because it has developed a strong reputation as a business-friendly state. It has attracted corporate investment, manufacturing projects, population growth, and considerable economic attention.
That reputation creates a natural follow-up question:
Does Tennessee’s business performance align with its quality-of-life performance?
The dashboard does not attempt to declare Tennessee good or bad based on a single number. Rankings are compressed summaries of larger and messier realities. They are useful, but they are not commandments delivered from the data-analysis mountaintop.
Instead, the dashboard shows where Tennessee appears in each ranking and allows users to examine the gap between them.
Designing the dashboard
I built the project in Tableau Public using state-level ranking data from multiple sources.
The main design challenge was presenting two separate ranking systems without turning the dashboard into a wall of numbers.
The map is intended for pattern recognition rather than exact comparison. Maps are good at showing where things happen. They are slightly less gifted at helping someone distinguish 17th place from 19th place without a tooltip and a mild headache.
Ranking summaries
Prominent ranking cards show Tennessee’s position in each category. These provide an immediate answer before the user begins exploring the rest of the visualization.
State comparisons
Supporting charts allow viewers to compare Tennessee with higher-ranking states and identify places that perform well in one category but not the other.
Interactive tooltips
Hovering over a state provides additional ranking information without permanently crowding the dashboard. This keeps the primary view readable while making more detail available when the user needs it.
What the dashboard reveals
The clearest takeaway is that being highly ranked for business does not automatically make a state equally highly ranked for quality of life.
That does not make business rankings meaningless. It means they answer a narrower question.
A company may prioritize:
- Labor costs
- Taxes
- Transportation access
- Energy prices
- Regulatory conditions
- Available development sites
Residents may prioritize:
- Healthcare
- Education
- Housing affordability
- Safety
- Environmental quality
- Public services
- Time spent wondering why another lane of traffic is somehow considered a transportation plan
Those priorities can overlap, but they are not interchangeable.
For Tennessee, the comparison suggests that the state’s economic reputation may be stronger than its performance on measures tied more directly to residents. That gap is not the final verdict on Tennessee. It is the beginning of a better question.
Economic development is important, but the benefits should eventually become visible in people’s daily lives. Otherwise, a state may become extremely efficient at attracting investment while residents wait for the quality-of-life portion of the presentation to begin.
Data limitations
This dashboard compares published rankings rather than raw measurements collected under one unified methodology.
That creates several limitations:
- Each source uses different criteria and weighting systems.
- Rankings simplify complex social and economic conditions.
- A small difference in rank may not represent a meaningful difference in actual performance.
- Some business-ranking information may be limited by what the source publishes publicly.
- Rankings can change from year to year as methodologies and economic conditions evolve.
For that reason, the dashboard should be interpreted as an exploratory comparison rather than proof that one state is objectively better than another.
The project asks users to examine the relationship between two narratives:
Where companies are told they should operate, and where people are told they should want to live.
Sometimes those narratives agree. Sometimes they appear to have attended completely different meetings.
Tools and skills used
This project involved:
- Tableau Public
- Data cleaning and preparation
- CSV integration
- Calculated fields
- Geographic visualization
- Interactive filters and tooltips
- Dashboard layout and visual hierarchy
- Comparative ranking analysis
- Data-source documentation
The project also required decisions about what not to include. More charts do not automatically create more insight. Occasionally they just create more charts.
What I would improve next
A future version of this dashboard could move beyond published rankings and compare the underlying measurements directly.
Potential additions include:
- Median household income
- Housing costs
- Healthcare access
- Educational attainment
- Commute times
- Employment growth
- Infrastructure spending
- Tax burden
- Population migration
- Environmental conditions
This would make it possible to examine why a state performs well in one ranking and poorly in another rather than only displaying the final positions.
I would also like to add year-over-year data. A state’s movement over time may be more informative than its position in one annual ranking.
Final takeaway
The purpose of this project was not to argue that business growth and quality of life are enemies. Ideally, they reinforce each other.
A strong economy should help create better jobs, stronger public services, improved infrastructure, and more opportunities for residents. A high quality of life should help states attract and retain the workforce businesses need.
The more useful question is whether those benefits are actually moving together.
A state should not have to choose between being business-friendly and people-friendly. But when rankings suggest that it has, the difference deserves more attention than another press release celebrating a top-ten finish.