The metropolitan space competing for the tightest labor market within the nation isn’t a tech hub on the West Coast, or a boomtown in Texas. It’s Birmingham, Ala., a southern metropolis with an unemployment price that’s practically half the nationwide degree and just like Salt Lake Metropolis’s.
Birmingham, essentially the most populous metro space in Alabama, had the second-lowest unemployment price of metropolitan areas with multiple million individuals in June, based on the Labor Division’s newest rankings. Its seasonally adjusted unemployment price for that month was 3.1%, close to its pre-pandemic degree of two.4% in February 2020, and barely above Salt Lake Metropolis’s 2.8% price for June. Birmingham’s June unemployment price was decrease than different southern cities akin to Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston—and compares with July’s nationwide price of 5.4%.
Economists say town’s diversified financial system, Alabama’s comparatively relaxed Covid-19 restrictions and resilient client habits have helped the regional financial system bounce again—and, as in different elements of the South, doubtlessly higher climate any influence from the case surge associated to the Delta variant of Covid-19.
Birmingham, as soon as identified for its iron and metal trade, is now extra reliant on the healthcare, finance, telecommunications and schooling sectors.
“These industries, nearly by definition, are typically far more proof against financial fluctuations both up or down,” stated Jeremy Thornton, an economics professor at Samford College in Birmingham.
