Best and worst states to make a living

I would not choose Texas for many reasons, but Washington State is an excellent place to live (West of the Cascades), and Minnesota is not bad if you can stand extreme cold.

So your state wasn't one of the Best States to Make a Living or Worst States to Make a Living? You can see how it fared below in the full 50-state rankings.

Again, these rankings are based on each state's Compensation and Quality Factor, a proprietary metric based on these factors in each area:

• Average salary, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
  
• Cost of living, based on data from C2ER.
  
• Employment rate, based on BLS data.
  
• Workplace conditions, based on the "Work Environment" component of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.
  

Here are all 50 U.S. states as ranked by their working conditions in the 2014 MoneyRates.com analysis:


 

1.	Washington
2.	Texas
3.	Minnesota
4.	Colorado
5.	Utah
6.	North Dakota
7.	Virginia
8.	Nevada
9.	Oklahoma
10.	Nebraska
11.	Illinois
12.	Delaware
13.	Georgia
14.	Maryland
15.	Iowa
16.	Arizona
17.	Wyoming
18.	Massachusetts
19.	Kansas
20.	Indiana
21.	Ohio
22.	Montana
23.	Tennessee
24.	Wisconsin
25.	North Carolina
26.	South Dakota
27.	Louisiana
28.	Kentucky
29.	California
30.	New Hampshire
31.	Vermont
32.	Michigan
33.	Florida
34.	Idaho
35.	Maine
36.	Pennsylvania
37.	West Virginia
38.	Oregon
39.	New Mexico
40.	Missouri
41.	South Carolina
42.	New Jersey
43.	Arkansas
44.	Alabama
45.	Alaska
46.	Connecticut
47.	Rhode Island
48.	Mississippi
49.	New York
50.	Hawaii