Utah moves up one place to finish second.
Utah’s tech prowess was highlighted this month when German tech giant SAP announced a deal to purchase Provo-based cloud unicorn Qualtrics, one of the leaders of the state’s startup and tech community known as Silicon Slopes. Utah tech companies are aided by energy costs 15% below the national average, per Moody’s Analytics. The state’s employment growth is tops in the nation over the past five years, and research firm Emsi forecasts annual job gains of 2.2% through 2022, also the highest for any state.
