The metropolitan area competing for the tightest labor market in the nation isn’t a West Coast tech hub, or a boomtown in Texas. It is a southern city with an unemployment rate that is nearly half the national level.
Birmingham, once known for its iron and steel industry, is now more reliant on the healthcare, finance, telecommunications and education sectors.
The Birmingham area’s tight labor market masks racial disparities in employment and income between the metro area, with 1.1 million residents, and the city, with 210,000 residents. The city, which has a 70% Black population, has a higher unemployment rate, higher poverty rate and lower median income than the metro area, where the white population is 62%, according to U.S. Census and Labor Department statistics.
Having a lower share of adults seeking work puts pressure on the labor market and can push down the unemployment rate. In June, Alabama had a labor-force participation rate—a measure of people working or actively looking for work—of about 56.8%, among the lowest in the nation, according to Labor Department data, compared with the nationwide level of 61.6% for that same month.
Kristen Hall, co-owner of The Essential, a downtown restaurant, said that business is booming and that they can’t find enough workers to meet demand. Associated Grocers of the South, a distribution warehouse that serves more than 200 independent grocery stores in the South, had about 40 open jobs in late July, including forklift operators, clerks and mechanics.
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