As 2024 concludes, a new report aimed to identify where the most hard-working Americans live, and it is not necessarily the richest or the poorest states. Utah ranked as the most entrepreneurial state, with Arizona and Texas following closely behind in second and third positions. On the other hand, Montana, South Dakota, and Alaska displayed the least enthusiasm in starting a new business or changing financial status.
This is according to a new study from digital marketing agency SEOProfy, which analyzed online searches via Google Keyword Planner for the first ten months of 2024. They measured how many times residents of each state searched for over 300 keywords related to income generation, directly or indirectly.
Top Ten Most Entrepreneurial States in 2024
| # | State | Monthly searches related to entrepreneurship, per 100,000 residents | Total searches related to entrepreneurship (January – October 2024) |
| 1 | Utah | 1,348 | 46,064 |
| 2 | Arizona | 1,230 | 91,440 |
| 3 | Texas | 1,219 | 371,688 |
| 4 | Georgia | 1,199 | 132,289 |
| 5 | Indiana | 1,159 | 79,541 |
| 6 | Washington | 1,142 | 89,258 |
| 7 | Colorado | 1,138 | 66,908 |
| 8 | Illinois | 1,051 | 131,951 |
| 9 | Minnesota | 1,040 | 59,676 |
| 10 | Delaware | 1,030 | 10,626 |
Utah is the most entrepreneurial state of 2024. Utahns seek answers to business and income matters 46,064 times a month. For a population of 3.4 million, this means that there are 1,348 monthly searches per 100,000 residents or one search for every 74 residents. Utahns were keen to learn “how to start a business” around 618 times a month, on average. Another 110 searches came from people who wanted to know “how to become a millionaire”, while 105 inquiries sought a “real estate investment calculator”.
Arizona is 2024’s second most entrepreneurial state, with 1,230 income-related searches per 100,000 residents every month. In total, Arizona searches for enterprising solutions averaged 91,440 times a month. In other words, there is one relevant inquiry for every 81 Arizonans. One of the questions that stands out, compared to the rest of the nation, is Arizona’s interest in “real estate investment for beginners”, which reaches 1,890 searches per month.
Texas ranked third for entrepreneurship in 2024. Texans’ collective search history suggests they seek income- and investment-related solutions 1,219 a month per 100,000 residents. When unrelated to population size, the monthly search reaches 371,688, on average. 4,800 of these explicitly seek to understand “how to start a business”. Texas is also unusually eager to find the “best CRM tools for a small business”, which triggers 644 searches every month.
The next most entrepreneurial states in 2024 are Georgia, Indiana, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and Delaware.
Montana, South Dakota and Alaska are the least interested states in setting up new businesses or finding other income streams. Interestingly, while this may explain why Alaska was, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the only state in America where GDP decreased in the second quarter of 2024, by -1.1%, and personal income, worth $55,358 million, was the fourth slowest to increase during the same period, things are different for Montana and South Dakota. Their GDPs were not among the bottom slowest growing ones in the same period. South Dakotans personal incomes, estimated at $68,633 million, did only increase by 4.4% from the first quarter of 2024 to the following, which is the eighth slowest rate of all states. However, Montana ranked in the mid-range in terms of personal income increase, estimated at $76,919 million, in Q2 of 2024, up 4.6% from the previous quarter. Both states had the 35th and 36th fastest-growing GDP during the same period in the US.
Across the US, there were an average 3,197,817 monthly searches related to entrepreneurship last year.
“Part time jobs near me” was the top-ranking income-related search term in 2024. It garnered 614,597 monthly inquiries across the US, coming most of all from New Jersey, Utah and Illinois. Americans searched for “free tax filing” 308,370 times a month, with Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee ranked as the stop states where these searches originated from. Utah, Wisconsin and Arizona are the most interested states in finding out “how to make money fast”, which ranked third nationwide with 123,772 searches per month in 2024.
Top 20 Most Searched Entrepreneurship-Related Keywords in 2024
| # | Keyword | Monthly searches |
| 1 | part time jobs near me | 614,597 |
| 2 | free tax filing | 308,370 |
| 3 | how to make money fast | 123,772 |
| 4 | build free resume | 100,254 |
| 5 | inexpensive phone plans | 93,919 |
| 6 | part time jobs hiring near me | 70,808 |
| 7 | how to start a business | 49,410 |
| 8 | how to earn extra income | 44,047 |
| 9 | cheap car insurance full coverage | 39,887 |
| 10 | work from home jobs for nurses | 38,926 |
| 11 | free tax filing online | 38,521 |
| 12 | ways to make money and fast | 37,877 |
| 13 | legitimate work from home jobs | 35,959 |
| 14 | ways to make extra money | 35,271 |
| 15 | easiest ways to earn money | 34,714 |
| 16 | ways to make money fast | 28,251 |
| 17 | how to make extra cash from home | 25,638 |
| 18 | free tax return filing | 24,003 |
| 19 | free tax filing near me | 22,671 |
| 20 | easy ways to make money fast | 22,639 |
“There is an important distinction between wanting to have more money while enjoying some stability and needing to do so in a precarious environment,” said Victor Karpenko, CEO of SEOProfy. “We consider both stemming reasons as part of a resilient mindset seeking solutions in a financially complicated situation, whether at present or in the future. We wanted to include people with initiative to change their financial status for the better, whatever “better” means for them.”
