Alabama

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, affecting retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base statewide.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.6%, the rate supports federal funding narratives across distressed counties (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 7.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 284,216 workers (18.6% of the tracked sectors), at an average wage of $77,189. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 396,947 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: State GDP of $325.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $103,763 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,020, a 4.3x spread in the same economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 6.17x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity.
• Cluster depth: 17 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base across the state.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.3x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 70.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.5% vacancy rate; potential redevelopment opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $38,294 can pay without cost burden (~$957/mo), and 42.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 60.3% of the population aged 18+ is in the labor force, reflecting a steady, available workforce statewide.

Alabama shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 6.17x concentration and 3,655 jobs in this sub-sector.

Cluster depth across forestry and logging, primary metal manufacturing, and textile mills creates supply-chain attraction leverage, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.