It was a year for some of the biggest deals ever done. In terms of jobs created, few single projects in history can match the 13,000 promised by the electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group, which in July announced plans to make LCD screens at a greenfield site in southeastern Wisconsin. It’s a hefty job count, and an impressive investment in dollars, too — $10 billion.

That’s a grand prize, to be sure, but there were dozens of announcements across multiple states that brought with them the promise of a four-figure increase in jobs. NTT Data Corp. says nearly 6,400 jobs are on the way in Texas. Amazon said there would be 2,700 created in Kentucky, more than 4,000 at two sites in New York, 2,000 in Ohio, and several other projects with job counts between 1,000 and 2,000. There was a promise of nearly 2,500 Pluralsight online education IT jobs in Utah, and a 2,000 computer programming jobs at DXC in New Orleans. And India-based Infosys plans for more than 2,000 jobs each in Indianapolis and North Carolina.

In terms of big-dollar deals, the Foxconn project was not the only $10 billion deal. That distinction was shared by the ExxonMobil SABIC project in Texas. To be sure, energy-related projects often carry large price tags. Another example is the nation’s biggest wind farm, announced by Invenergy LLC, General Electric, and American Electric Power. Worth $4.5 billion, it’s under construction in the Oklahoma panhandle and could provide power for more than a million utility customers. In all, there were a dozen projects last year with investments exceeding a billion dollars.

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 2017 (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 2018 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 2018 Silver Shovels.