Everyone’s heard the buzz: California is not friendly to commerce.

Lured by lower taxes, reduced costs and less regulation, businesses are packing up to leave.

But that’s only half the story. Many entrepreneurs still see the Golden State as a ticket to success.

And despite being named by Chief Executive magazine as the worst state in the nation to do business in 2014, California remains strong, experts say.

The state overtook Brazil this year as the world’s seventh-largest economy and is highly competitive and extremely attractive for companies, according to Don Walls, president of Walls and Associates, which compiles one of the most comprehensive sets of American business data for researchers.

“Businesses would always like lower taxes, cheaper electricity, cheaper labor and cheaper places to locate their workers,” Walls said. “I’m not saying what they want is bad, but that’s not what makes California’s economy continue to grow stronger.”

According to Walls and other experts, the state remains an economic powerhouse because of the quality of talent in the job market.

Experts say employee skills, coupled with a vast amount of private equity, great weather, a range of attractions, and its geographic connection to investment from the rest of the Pacific Rim and Asia, continue to keep California’s economy strong.

“California is a great place to live,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist for the Anderson Forecast and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.

“It’s located at the edge of the Pacific Rim and people want to live here — that’s why housing prices are so high. But you always have a mix of companies moving in and moving out.”

Southern California’s large population also is attractive to businesses coming to the region, said Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., a private nonprofit established by L.A. County to spur economic development.

“Whether you’re located in Los Angeles County, Orange County or the Inland Empire, you have access to a resident population of 18 million people, which means that from the perspective of businesses that serve consumers or other small businesses, this is a huge market to step into,” Kleinhenz said.

Data from Walls & Associates’ National Establishment Time-Series Database, based on annual snapshots of Dun & Bradstreet data, indicate the actual number of jobs leaving the state is small compared with the total number of jobs that remain and are created here every year.

In an average year, of the 32,000 companies that move annually, whether within California, out of the state, or into the state, only 1,700 in a year moved out of the state, Walls said.

“I think there are dimensions one tends to focus on when California does more poorly than other states with taxes, etcetera, but that’s a misleading way to think about this,” Walls said.

“It’s the total environment that impacts business, and the questions then become: Is there evidence that California does not attract business? When businesses have a chance to leave, do they stay? The answer is more than 90 percent who moved because their current location was not optimal, chose to move within the state.”

Brook Taylor, spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, or GO-Biz, said the state has many things going for it.

“Companies in California have access to one of the largest markets in the world, a skilled workforce and a network of innovative partners and suppliers that allows them to create products you won’t find anywhere else in the world,” Taylor said. “California is a breeding ground for entrepreneurs and successful, global companies.”

Despite the headlines that are often generated when a company moves to another state, Kleinhenz believes that it’s important to keep things in perspective.

“The relative number of firms and people leaving California is small in comparison to the number of companies and the population of California,” he said.