Ohio’s Competitive Advantage: Why the Numbers Back What We've Always Known About the Valley

If you've spent your career running a business in the Mahoning Valley, you don't need a national ranking to tell you this is a good place to build something. You already know. You know the workforce shows up. You know the costs are manageable. You know that when a customer in Pittsburgh or Cleveland or Detroit needs something fast, you can get it there.

But it's worth pausing to acknowledge something that's been happening quietly over the past few years: the rest of the country is starting to catch on.

Ohio's Best Showing in Nearly Two Decades

In July 2025, CNBC released its annual "America's Top States for Business" rankings — and Ohio came in at number five. That's the state's highest finish since the index launched in 2007, up from number seven in 2024 and number twelve the year before.

What stands out isn't just the ranking itself. It's what Ohio led on. Among the top five states, Ohio had the best infrastructure, the lowest cost of doing business, and the lowest cost of living. In other words, the very things that business owners in our region have been leveraging for decades are now being recognized as structural advantages on a national stage.

Ohio's infrastructure ranking alone jumped from 13th to 1st in a single year — driven in large part by the state's reliable energy access, construction-ready industrial sites, and logistics network. CNBC weighted infrastructure and economic fundamentals more heavily this year, reflecting what companies are actually prioritizing when they decide where to invest. Ohio delivered.

The Tax and Cost Picture

For owners operating in or around Warren, Youngstown, and the broader Mahoning Valley, the cost structure has always been part of the appeal — even if it doesn't make headlines. Here's what the current landscape looks like.

Ohio has no corporate income tax. The state recently doubled its commercial activity tax (CAT) exclusion from $3 million to $6 million, which effectively exempts roughly 90 percent of Ohio-based businesses from that tax altogether. For a family-owned company doing $4 or $5 million in revenue, that's a meaningful change.

The region's cost of living runs 8 to 11 percent below the national average, depending on the specific metric. Industrial real estate averages around $3.90 per square foot — about 33 percent less than the national average of $5.83. If you're a manufacturer or service company that needs warehouse space, shop floor, or office square footage, the math here is simply better than most of the country.

These aren't marginal differences. For a business owner weighing whether to reinvest in their operation, expand into an adjacent space, or bring on additional employees, the cost advantage in Northeast Ohio creates real breathing room.

Location Still Matters

There's a reason that Amazon built a $30 million distribution center in Bazetta last year, and that Kimberly-Clark — a Fortune 500 company — chose Trumbull County for an $800 million manufacturing facility. Geography.

Warren sits within 500 miles of 50 percent of the U.S. population and over 60 percent of national purchasing income. That includes ten of the top 25 metro areas in the country. You can provide overnight ground service to both New York City and Chicago from here. Ohio has the fourth-largest interstate highway system in the nation and the third-largest manufacturing workforce, with more than 5.5 million workers.

For service businesses, distributors, and light manufacturers — the types of companies we work with at Methodica — this positioning matters. It means your customers are close. Your supply chain is short. And your ability to serve a broad geography from a low-cost base is a genuine competitive advantage, not a consolation prize.

The Momentum Is Real

Since 2019, JobsOhio — the state's private nonprofit economic development corporation — has facilitated over $87 billion in fixed-capital commitments across the state. That number reflects a wave of investment from companies like Intel, AWS, Anduril Industries, Amgen, and Meta, among many others.

Closer to home, 2025 brought its own milestones. The Kimberly-Clark plant in Trumbull County will create approximately 500 permanent jobs with a projected annual payroll north of $49 million. SoftBank acquired the former Lordstown Motors facility for $375 million to support the Stargate Project — the $500 billion AI initiative backed by OpenAI and Oracle. Vallourec, the French steel producer, announced a $48 million expansion at its Youngstown operations, reinforcing nearly $1.5 billion the company has invested in Ohio over the past 15 years. And a $26 million Youngstown Innovation Hub for Aerospace and Defense is expected to generate over $160 million in economic impact and 450 new jobs by 2029.

Anthony Trevena, executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority, put it simply in a year-end interview with The Vindicator: "It's momentum that I haven't seen in my career."

What This Means for Business Owners

None of this changes what it feels like to run your company day-to-day. You're still managing employees, serving customers, and dealing with the same challenges you've always dealt with. A CNBC ranking doesn't fix your supply chain or hire your next foreman.

But here's what it does mean: the region your business operates in is gaining recognition and investment at a pace we haven't seen in a generation. The structural advantages — low costs, central geography, strong infrastructure, a deep manufacturing workforce — are not going away. If anything, they're becoming more valuable as companies across the country look to reshore production and shorten supply chains.

If you're a business owner who's been thinking about what comes next — whether that's five years from now or five months — this is context worth considering. The Valley isn't just a sentimental home. It's an increasingly attractive place to own, operate, and invest in a business.

And for what it's worth, we've always thought so.

At Methodica Capital, we partner with family-owned and founder-led businesses in Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. If you're thinking about succession, a partial sale, or just want to understand your options, we'd welcome the conversation. Reach out at 330-355-8492 or visit our contact page.

Sources: CNBC "America's Top States for Business" 2025; JobsOhio; City of Warren Economic Profile; Cuyahoga County Development; The Vindicator (Jan. 3, 2026); Mahoning Matters. Business Journal