Economy
Arkansas is a Natural for Business, noted as a leader in the South for its favorable business climate and low cost of doing business. Our diversified economy provides stability during downturns that often adversely affect other states.
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Arkansas is proud of the seven homegrown Fortune 500 companies headquartered here: Dillard’s, J.B. Hunt, Murphy Oil Corp., Murphy USA, Tyson Foods, Walmart and Windstream. Many Arkansas companies and communities are making headlines:
- Arkansas is ranked in the top 10 in percentage of clean technology jobs in the workforce, according to a September 2012 report by DBL Investors.
- CNBC's "Top States for Business 2013" ranked Arkansas's cost of doing business as the fourth lowest in the nation. CNBC also ranked the state's workforce seventh in the nation.
- The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences & the Arts in Hot Springs was ranked #13 in the top 100 high schools in the nation by Newsweek (now owned by The Daily Beast).
- Arkansas's education system ranks fifth in the nation, according to Education Week's "Quality Counts" report for 2013.
- In 2013, Forbes named Fayetteville, Little Rock, and Fort Smith among the top MSAs in the U.S. for Business and Careers. Making the magazine's list of "Best Small Places for Business and Careers" were Jonesboro, Hot Springs, and Pine Bluff.
- Arkansas-based Wal-Mart was included among Fortune's Most Admired Companies in 2013.
- Collective Bias, a startup social shopper media company founded in 2009 in Bentonville, is among Forbes' list of "America's Most Promising Companies."