The metropolitan area competing for the tightest labor market in the nation isn’t a tech hub on the West Coast, or a boomtown in Texas. It is Birmingham, Ala., a southern city with an unemployment rate that is nearly half the national level and similar to Salt Lake City’s.
Birmingham, the most populous metro area in Alabama, had the second-lowest unemployment rate of metropolitan areas with more than one million people in June, according to the Labor Department’s latest rankings. Its seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for that month was 3.1%, near its pre-pandemic level of 2.4% in February 2020, and slightly above Salt Lake City’s 2.8% rate for June. Birmingham’s June unemployment rate was lower than other southern cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston—and compares with July’s national rate of 5.4%.
Economists say the city’s diversified economy, Alabama’s relatively relaxed Covid-19 restrictions and resilient consumer behavior have helped the regional economy bounce back—and, as in other parts of the South, potentially better weather any impact from the case surge related to the Delta variant of Covid-19.
Birmingham, once known for its iron and steel industry, is now more reliant on the healthcare, finance, telecommunications and education sectors.
“Those industries, almost by definition, tend to be much more resistant to economic fluctuations either up or down,” said Jeremy Thornton, an economics professor at Samford University in Birmingham.