New Report Ranks All 50 States–Here’s Illinois’ Overall Ranking

You see lists all the time that rank the 50 states in all sorts of categories, like best states for families, best states for singles, best states for vacationing, best states to retire to, etc.

This list is also a ranking of all 50 states, but not in just one particular category. This "best states" ranking takes a look at data points to measure how well states are actually performing for their citizens. Here are some things that were used to determine each state's overall ranking:

• Health care
• Education
• Natural environment
• Opportunity
• Economy
• Crime and corrections
• Infrastructure
• Fiscal stability

Before We Take A Look At Illinois' Report Card And Overall Ranking, Let's See Which State Is Sitting In 2025's Number-One Spot

US News and World Report released their "Best States Rankings" a couple of days back, and they've named the same state to the number-one position for the third straight time: Utah. Here are their numbers:

• Crime and corrections: #7
• Economy: #3
• Education: #4
• Fiscal stability: #1
• Health care: #14
• Infrastructure: #3
• Natural environment: #48
• Opportunity: #19

Rounding out the top 5 best states according to USNews.com, we've got New Hampshire at #2, Idaho at #3, Minnesota at #4, and Nebraska at #5.

The lowest-ranked state is Louisiana. Other states in the bottom 10 are Alaska, Mississippi, New Mexico, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Michigan, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

Moving On To Our State Of Illinois, It's Pretty Obvious That We've Got A Lot Of Work To Do To Raise Up Our Ranking

That's because we've got a lot more states ahead of us than we have behind us in the overall rankings, and some of our state's numbers are really not very good.

According to USNews.com, Illinois' overall rank among the 50 states is 36th. Here are Illinois' numbers, where we only break the top 20 in two categories:

Health care: 24th
Education: 14th
Natural environment: 45th
Opportunity: 35th
Economy: 42nd
Crime and corrections: 15th
Infrastructure: 22nd
Fiscal stability: 50th

Illinois has a population of 12,710,158, with a GDP of 1 trillion dollars, and a median income of $47,015.