US tops revised competiveness ranking for 1st time since ’08

GENEVA – Organizers of the annual Davos conference say the United States is atop their list of the world’s most competitive economies for the first time in a decade, reflecting a new methodology and long-term factors more than recent policies of the Trump administration.

The World Economic Forum released its “Global Competitiveness Report” on Wednesday. It’s based on nearly 100 separate factors in a dozen categories to better reflect today’s rapidly changing, increasingly digitized world economy.

The U.S. is followed by Singapore, Germany, Switzerland and Japan in the top five spots. The U.S. was last No. 1 in 2008. Switzerland was first last year.

The authors tweaked the index to account for the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, changes in human capital and what the Forum calls the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”