"Must be a credit to [the] Manufacturing-Works (M-W) team," said Ben Avery, business and industry division director for the Wyoming Business Council in an email.
But M-W is playing down the statistic slightly.
"It is not so much a credit to the M-W team, but a credit to the proactive customers that were found and were willing to have us listen to their problems and accept growth as the cure for their issues," said M-W founder Larry Stewart in an email.
He even shot down the state's No. 2 position in the report.
"Actually Wyoming has the fourth-best growth rate in terms of manufacturing contribution to the state GDP, not doing as well as Alaska, Oregon or Utah but significantly above anyone else," Stewart said, citing differing statistics from the Manufacturing Institute.
And while manufacturing employment has taken a dip in all 50 states, Wyoming's 12 percent dip between 2006 and 2011 is one of the 10 lowest in the nation.
However, Wyoming's manufacturing economy still ranks toward the bottom of the national ladder in terms of employment percentage. Only Hawaii at 2.2 percent of manufacturing employment is less than Wyoming's 3.1 percent according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Comparatively, Indiana, the top state for manufacturing employment, boasts 16 percent employed in manufacturing.
But Stewart wasn't shy about accepting praise for the manufacturers that gave the state its high rankings, where deserved.
"Hats off to the manufacturers that actually made this happen," he said.
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