"State makes mark": How in the world can the state claim credit for that? The employers earned their spots on the list, not the state. Is the state now saying, "you didn't build this," as our national leaders said?

"Rankings are determined exclusively by employee responses to survey questions, removing any subjectivity" What?!!! It's totally subjective, it's the personal opinion of all the employees that took the survey...

to mohawk - An opinion survey is always subjective, but reporting the results is not subjective. I have seen other so called evaluations of state competitiveness, and they are loaded with right wing biases. For example, a higher tax rate is presumed to be "bad for business". Wages are measured, but workforce quality is not measured at all. I think this gives credit to our state, our workers, and the winning companies.

@DufferH - The state didn't claim credit, but as a state, we are proud of where we live, that we live in a state where people can be happy at their jobs to a scale that is unusual in the US. We all contribute in some small part to the quality of life in our state.

It's refreshing to hear about the Graco model. Giving stock options aalows people to have a stake in their future and the future of the company, which results in a much stronger, vested work place. Contrast that with other company models that keep wages low to feed salaries and bonus's of upper mgmnt. and high turnover rates. too many penny wise, pound foolish companies in this world.

Where's the full list??

About 10 years ago, a friend of mine who was a manager at a local company was sent to a couple of other states to figure out why the Minnesota operation was so much better. His conclusion? Minnesota workers made the difference. They showed up on time, could read, write and do arithmetic, they treated each other with respect and tried to do a good job.

Conclusion? Minnesota Works for Business!

According to the right wing , we have a hostile business climate here in which no good company wants to be? How many low tax low service states had 23 in the ranking? Intelligent business execs know better and we have a great state despite our recent foolish behavior which was corrected in November.

Be vigilant - global corporations are snapping up well-run Minnesota companies for their profits & wrecking them. See: 3M (W. James McNerney III from GE). There are other examples. We are going back to the 1920's/30's with too-big-to-fail mega corporations. Not good. Break them up!

BVMann: Correct. There was a recent example of this during the summer of 2012. That company was one of the Top 100 Minnesota Workplaces, but not anymore. It's all about making the shareholders happy now...employees are easily replaceable drones. Sad but true.