Colorado Colorado is steadily growing the kinds of industries that every state envies — high-paying, forward-thinking, and attractive to highly educated young people. It’s the top state in the concentration of aerospace employment, third in the concentration of high-tech workers, and sixth in the concentration of workers in creative-class occupations, according to the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade. The economy is on the move in biosciences, advanced manufacturing, electronics, defense, energy, and of course, tourism across the Rocky Mountains.

Announced expansion last year was led by Google’s ongoing development of its campus in Boulder. The company bought more land and made room for more employees in 2016, and continues to line up space this year. More technology growth is in Greenwood Village, where Charter Communications announced its plans to fill up a 12-story office tower under construction. And the Coors family continued to brew its path beyond the beer business by expanding its CoorsTek engineered ceramics operation with a $120 million R&D and manufacturing facility in Golden.

The state’s attractiveness as a business destination helped it grow its headquarters operations last year, too — three such expansions are on the list of Colorado’s biggest 2016 projects. The pharmaceuticals sector is on the rise in Colorado, as well. So is the somewhat lower-tech but always in-demand business of cheese — Leprino Foods’ growth in Greeley continues. It’s putting the topping on a tasty economic picture in Colorado.

IndianaIndiana jobs were in the national headlines in 2016 in a bit of a mixed way, when the planned contraction of Carrier Corp. and other United Technologies operations in the state became an issue on the presidential campaign trail. The job losses were part of candidate Trump’s speeches, and then returned to the headlines when Trump and the vice-president-elect, outgoing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, hatched an incentive package that persuaded the manufacturer to hold onto some (but not all) of the Indiana jobs.

With that, Indiana’s ongoing growth engine was obscured by controversial headlines, not the first time in recent years that has happened. While the nation was focused on Carrier, the state was adding many hundreds of jobs across the manufacturing sector, from pet food in Richmond to RVs in LaGrange to milk in Fort Wayne to auto parts in Shelbyville.

That’s just part of the Indiana growth picture, though. It has long been a center of transportation and logistics activity, and that growth continued in 2016. And the state continues to make its mark in technology, with a constant stream of announcements. Most visible is Salesforce, which made plans for another 800 new jobs in Indianapolis and took on a big chunk of space in the state’s tallest building — enough space, in fact, that the building itself now goes by the Salesforce name, with the company’s logo recently replacing the Chase logo atop the tower.

TennesseeThe automotive industry has been good to Tennessee for many years, and 2016 continued the success story for the state’s top manufacturing sector. Promising a roughly 10-figure investment and more than 1,400 jobs, General Motors in Spring Hill is putting in a new high-efficiency engine program and other modernizations. And manufacturing jobs are promised in other areas, too, including chemicals, fibers and filaments, and flour milling.

Distribution is also a longtime job creator in the state that’s the headquarters of one of the biggest names in delivery, FedEx. The fact that FedEx is delivering more jobs is not an unusual occurrence in Tennessee. But there are hundreds more distribution job opportunities on the way from rival DHL, and more from Lowe’s, among others.

But Tennessee’s Silver Shovel award this year is really an honor for diverse job growth, as gains in manufacturing and distribution were supplemented by significant projects in services and healthcare research. In fact, the biggest prize on the list from a job-creation perspective is the expansion project planned by ALSAC St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. As many as 1,800 new jobs are in the pipeline in the project that’s expected to double the institution’s economic impact on the area.

And hundreds more will be working for Agero Inc., which runs calls centers that provide vehicle and driver safety, security, and information services.

MethodologyArea Development’s annual Gold and Silver Shovel Awards recognize states for their achievements in attracting high-value investment projects that will create a significant number of new jobs in their communities. We collected information from all 50 states about their top-10 job-creation and investment projects initiated in 2016 (only those projects that actually had monies invested, “broke ground,” began an expansion, started new hiring, etc. were considered). Based on a combination of weighted factors — including the number of new jobs to be created in relation to the state’s population, the combined dollar amount of the investments, the number of new facilities, the diversity of industry represented — five states achieving the highest weighted overall scores were awarded Area Development’s 2017 Gold Shovels in five population categories: 12+ million, 8+ to 12 million, 5+ to 8 million, 3+ to 5 million, and fewer than 3 million. Runners-up in each of these population categories were awarded 2017 Silver Shovels.