MANCHESTER — New Hampshire posted a score of B+, putting it in the second tier of states with the best Manufacturing Industry Health, but still in the top 10, according to a report from Ball State University and Conexus Indiana.

The 2012 Manufacturing and Logistics Report Card ranked all 50 states on logistics, human capital, worker benefit costs and other factors affecting business. Only five got an A for Manufacturing Industry Health.

New Hampshire scored highest on Human Capital — A.

New Hampshire scored poorest on logistics, with an F, which is a function of geography, Ball State Center for Business and Economic Research director Michael Hicks said.

“You have very high human capital,” he said. That is a function of test scores at the eighth-grade level, high school graduation and adults with associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.

Chris Way, interim director of economic development for the state, said, “Overall, I think New Hampshire did okay.

“The thing that’s of most importance to those looking to locate or expand here would be the manufacturing and the human capital,” he said.

The study gave New Hampshire an average grade of C for tax climate.

“I would also say that you also have studies that contradict each other, for example, in the overall tax climate,” Way said. New Hampshire ranked sixth nationally for overall tax friendliness in the Tax Foundation’s annual State Business Tax Climate Index, released in January.

Jim Roche, president of New Hampshire Business and Industry Association, said, “If we hope to experience a strong economy today and years from now, New Hampshire public policy makers need to do everything in their power to ensure the goose that lays the golden egg — advanced manufacturing/high-tech — is able to operate in a favorable tax and business climate.”

Competition for those firms is global, not just regional, he said.

The Ball State/Conexus report gave New Hampshire a C+ for productivity and innovation.

But Zenagui Brahim, director of operations, for the New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership, said he doesn’t think that rating accurately reflects strides the state’s manufacturers have made in productivity innovation, continuous improvement and reducing costs.

He did, however, agree that there is still a skills gap for certain jobs in manufacturing .

Despite improvements in the manufacturing sector over the last year, an economic slowdown in Europe, China, Brazil and India, coupled with uncertainty, make a U.S. recession likely in 2012-13, Hicks said.