In our continuing “Focus on” series, WorkingNation takes an in-depth look at cities and towns around the country – recognizing local efforts that create jobs as pathway to economic mobility.
In our latest article, we Focus on Birmingham, Alabama.
“The root of Birmingham is actually a blue collar city.” That’s how Mayor Randall Woodfin – now in his second term – describes his city. Founded in 1871, Birmingham, Alabama was built on an abundance of iron ore, coal, and limestone, and the area’s iron and steel production.
“People came here and participated in the Industrial Revolution,” he explains. These days, Woodfin points to manufacturing, health care, biotechnology, and financial services as the city’s future. The city has built local training programs and economic development initiatives to capitalize on these growing industries. It’s also celebrating and supporting its entrepreneurs.
Birmingham is home to almost 200,000 residents. More than 67% of the city’s population identifies as Black alone, more than 25% as white alone, and just under 5% as Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Beyond the city limits, the greater Birmingham area is made up of seven counties and a population of more than 1.1 million, according to the Birmingham Business Alliance. The region’s varied – and expanding – economic sectors support more than 550,000 jobs.
As with many cities and regions across the country, the strategy to grow jobs locally is based on community cooperation, a bringing together of civic, business, education, and nonprofit leaders.
Birmingham: Training Workers for Thriving Industries
Manufacturing is a cornerstone of the local economy and the job training programs are being built around that industry.
The J.M. Smucker Co. – a company known for its national brands such as Hostess, Jif, and, of course, Smucker’s – has a manufacturing facility with more than 700 employees in a Birmingham suburb.
U.S. Steel has a state-of-the art electric arc furnace (EAF) facility in Fairfield, just 10 miles from the city. It has the capability to produce 1.6 million tons of steel and many of its products are used in the country’s oil and energy plants.
Woodfin notes, “Birmingham is strategically located in the middle of the state and sits within two hours of all four of the major [auto] manufacturers.” They include Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai, and a joint venture called Mazda Toyota Manufacturing.
To help fill open manufacturing jobs, a number of training programs have been created.
Woodfin calls Women in Advanced Manufacturing (WAM), which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO union, a “fundamental game changer.” WAM is a no-cost, six-month, part-time pre-apprenticeship training program designed to get more women of color into advanced manufacturing.
“This pre-apprenticeship program allows women to continue to work and attend class in the evening, prepping them, and then following their graduation, enter the manufacturing field directly or apply through a formal program,” he adds.
Birmingham: An ‘aligned job creation, job preparation, and job access strategy’
Prosper, a Birmingham economic development organization, says its mission is “building the most inclusive and thriving economy in the Southeast.”
President J.W. Carpenter says, “We are working to make sure we have an inclusive, funded, measurable, and aligned job creation, job preparation, and job access strategy that will help grow Birmingham with, and for, everyone.”
Carpenter says, practically speaking, this means that opportunities for a good job are open to everyone living in the community.
“We need to make sure we’re making sure our major workforce and industry streams – that could be life sciences and biotech, could be precision metal advanced manufacturing – are democratizing opportunity and diversifying the folks that have access to the workforce, the business ownership, and the contracts within those streams so that everyone benefits.”
Carpenter says stakeholders have worked hard to build their collaborative muscle. “Even though it takes time and it’s not always linear, it’s moral, strategic, and right. That is where we want to live.”
Advances in Health Care, Life Sciences, and Biotechnology
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is the largest employer in the city and in the state. Says Woodfin, “UAB as an institution of research, a medical facility, as a hospital, and a four-year university, employing over 80,000 jobs throughout the entire region, but 30,000-plus direct jobs at UAB alone.”
Birmingham’s emerging biotechnology sector received a boost from its Tech Hub designation from the federal government – Birmingham Biotechnology Hub. “We have Southern Research. That’s a research facility that’s on par with the facilities you’ve seen in Cambridge, Baltimore, and the Palo Alto/San Fran area that is kicking out research that saves lives.
“Our intersection of biotechnology, innovation, and AI is strong, and this gives us the opportunity to not only produce jobs, but at a minimum, equally, if not more importantly, save lives,” says the mayor.
The sector’s growth is driven, in part, by UAB, according to Sanjay Singh, Ph.D., chair of Birmingham Bio Innovation Corporation, the administrative body of the Birmingham Biotechnology Hub.
“UAB is one of the greatest startups in the knowledge base world. There is so much entrepreneurship – all these young men and women coming and fighting and getting the $1 million, $2 million, $3 million grants [for] world class research.”
He continues, “We are taking that manufacturing workforce mentality and scrappiness, and we’re going to apply that to bioinformatics. We have an entire laddering process, career ladders, and we are starting from people in high school all the way to post-doc.
“With Southern Research, we have set up an entire lab for high school students. One of our partners among the community college system…is going to build two mobile labs. It’s not easy always to bring students to our lab. Let’s take the lab to them.”
Singh says, “Among the top 15 institutions, our commercialization has also been the lowest, right? So for the amount of money we get from NIH (National Institutes of Health) in terms of R&D, we haven’t had the history of spinning off companies like in California.”
Station 41: Building and Commercializing a Bioscience Ecosystem
“Bioscience is a priority economic opportunity for Birmingham and Alabama,” according to Erik Schwiebert, Ph.D., director of Station 41.
Station 41 was created to address that opportunity for entrepreneurs. It’s led by Southern Research and is affiliated with UAB. It helps new start-ups in the bioscience industry grow their ideas through funding, expertise, and lab space.
“Station 41 is really all about ecosystem-building. For me, I call myself the facilitator-in-chief. I just want to help as many new entrepreneurs start life sciences and biotechnology companies.”
Station 41 opened in January 2024 and was fully leased in less than a year with 22 member companies, four of them virtual.
“A company can pay $250 a month to have a virtual affiliation with the incubator and they get a badge. They can come and access our mentoring, our programming, and they can also access the shared lab equipment laboratories that we have.”
Among the current members are Celestia Diagnostics which is working “to develop diagnostic medical tests for long COVID and other infection-associated chronic conditions” and ASRT Laboratories which is “advancing scientific research and fostering workforce development in molecular genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, pharmacogenomics, and recombinant biotechnology.”
“Now we have the greenlight from UAB and SR leadership to expand our incubator space from 11,000 square feet to 50,000 square feet,” notes Schwiebert. Additional members are expected to begin occupying the expanded space in the latter half of this year – and continuing through 2026 and into 2027.
Schwiebert offers an observation, “Most scientists never want to retire. Maybe they’ll retire from their academic appointment, and they’ll move over and apply their science in a company.
“We’re also building a venture bullpen of what I would call serial entrepreneurs that come into our ecosystem and maybe free agents that can help one or multiple companies. So, it’s all about entrepreneurship.”
Significant Support for Small Businesses
“We’re driven by small business. Our identity in supporting small business,” says Woodfin. “Whether it’s a Black firm, a white firm, any type of small business it is our goal, our desire to continue to do everything we can to not only stand them up, but let them grow, as well.”
Operation: Backing Black Businesses is a Prosper initiative that is mapping the economic ecosystem with the goal of identifying the best ways to support Black-owned businesses.
“Most of your job growth is going to come from small businesses. Sometimes it’s distributed maybe one, two, three jobs at a time across a number of different industries. But that is where, if not most, a whole heck of a lot of your job growth is going to be,” explains Prosper’s Carpenter.
“Our focus has been predominantly on Black-owned businesses, but we have supported every identity of business owners since we launched. We have found a number of folks across industries have terrific ideas, but a lot of the time we all need a little bit of help,” he adds.
During his first mayoral term, Woodfin created the Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity (IEO), designed to foster business retention and expansion, real estate redevelopment and reuse, and business recruitment. It also looks at creating more business opportunities for minority owners.
“Birmingham is a majority minority community, so we want to ensure that there’s efforts to ensure that they have opportunities to not only do business with Birmingham, but with each other,” says Cornell Wesley, director of IEO.
Financial Help to Expand Existing Businesses
The city’s RISE initiative (Retention Incentives for Success and Expansion) is designed to help existing businesses continue to grow. It’s made up of two funds, one a direct cash incentive, the other providing loans.
Wesley says, “Philosophically, if there’s a gap in the market, then we try to either be an intermediary to a resource provider or in some cases be a direct contributor.”
To underwrite the RISE initiative, Wesley turned to the city itself, more specifically, to its vast portfolio of real estate assets.
With the support of the City Council, surplus properties were identified, liquidated with an attached development agreement that indicates community need.
“Those pools of accumulate resources are then redeployed back into the community via an application process.
“What makes you eligible is that you must be either hiring employees, purchasing furniture, fixtures, and/or equipment, or making a substantial renovation into your asset brick-and-mortar that then can allow you to hire additional staff or grow your business,” says Wesley.
“We’ve touched approximately 17 businesses in under 24 months with total awards probably around a half a million dollars.”
Strengthening the Growing Hispanic Business Community
Similar to other community stakeholders, ¡HICA! (Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama) has a community economic development program.
Carlos Alemán, Ph.D., the organization’s CEO, says the organization’s Camino Loan Fund has been supporting entrepreneurs since 2019.
“We’ve been able to deploy about $850,000 across 70-something loans. And to date, have only had one default of less than $5,000. Really successful programming.”
He notes, last year, the Camino Loan Fund was awarded a $300,000 CDFI (Community Development Financial Institutions) technical assistance grant from the U.S. Department of Treasury.
Alemán adds, “We also do our tax prep, small business development program, financial literacy curriculum, and housing counseling.
“We’ve developed this expertise around serving a particular community, but it can be used to serve a broader community. We realized that we were serving people from over 40 different countries in our immigration legal services.
“We want everyone to know that we may have a particular specialty in Spanish, but we also understand how systems work for immigrants and that we can benefit folks.”
Collaboration Between Employers and Educators Has Been ‘Transformative’
Alemán says among ¡HICA!’s multiple programs is an education and career pathways program. “We work with folks around the postsecondary educational options, community college, university, short-term certificates but also workforce development.”
He says there was a realization some years ago around the challenges young people were confronting around the college pathway.
“They’re first-generation students, perhaps their parents didn’t go to college, and then if they have status issues that creates an additional barrier. We reached out to our partners at UnidosUS. So, we implemented a college access program that they had, and since then we have been able to meet with hundreds of students and help them understand what their postsecondary educational opportunities are.
He adds, “As the economy has shifted and the cost of universities and colleges has increased dramatically, we saw that a lot of our folks were choosing not to go to college, but they were still trying to figure out how to make a living for themselves and their families.”
He says collaborating with area community colleges and employers around workforce has been “transformative for us, understanding how these systems work and what we could provide as an intermediary between the population that we serve as the most trusted community organization that exists, and our educational and corporate partners to create direct lines in terms of opportunities.”
‘Exposure and opportunity’
Woodfin says, “I live in a city where there’s over 20% poverty, and it’s not just poverty, it’s concentrated poverty. I live in a city where the majority of our children’s parents don’t have any form of a degree. I live in a city where over 90% of the children live on free and reduced lunch.
“Nothing’s more important than giving our children two things, exposure and opportunity.”
The mayor puts focus on young students and the access to career exploration early on. “I believe kids as early as between ages of 11 and 13, 11 and 14, start getting a feel for what they like, what they have interest in, and I think you start their early exposure.”
He says students should be able to finish their high school day early to go to work, and receive high school credits for those working hours.
“It doesn’t take away from their academics. You just have to have a balance. If young people aren’t going straight into a traditional four-year institution of higher learning, what better way to be exposed to industries than being exposed as sophomores, juniors and seniors?”
In addition, the Birmingham City Schools have a robust career and technical education program, according to Woodfin.
“I would put our CTE program up against anybody’s. We have to continue to share with our parents these opportunities exist for their children. We’ve got to continue to share with our students, ‘If you don’t want the path into a four-year university, if you don’t want the path into becoming an entrepreneur, if you don’t want the path after high school going into the military, the CTE program will put you on this path for a trade or a certificate or to your college that gets you into the workforce faster as well as getting paid a livable wage.’”
Economic Mobility: The Birmingham Promise
The mayor also highlights Birmingham Promise, launched in 2019, a public-private partnership created to support students in the Birmingham City Schools district. It’s goal is economic mobility for young residents.
“We are focused on ensuring that students can enter life and careers well prepared and with the resources that they need in order to achieve economic security,” explains Samantha Williams, the executive director of the organization.
“To do that, we ensure that they don’t have to pay tuition to get a two- or four-year degree in Alabama. If they can get into a college, we’ll pay the tuition,” continues Williams.
“We purposely keep the entry requirements minimal so that students don’t have to worry about writing an essay for us, or paying a fee, or having a certain test score or GPA.”
Williams says, great effort is focused on the organization’s success coaching model. Williams says of the first class of students who received scholarships, 66% continued into their second year.
“We’re now at 74% for that second-year persistence rate. I am pushing to get that to 80% because if we are helping support financially, providing this coaching, working directly with the universities – why can’t we get it there? What is really mind boggling is what this team has done to put in that much work – alongside students – to help them move through.”
Woodfin says, “Over the last five years, we’ve been able to give out 1,600 scholarships to young people who are most likely first-generation college students to the tune of over $11 million.”
Williams adds, “We also provide them with internships [during senior year] that pay $15 an hour to expose them to the job market in Birmingham, a community of mentors to grow their network, and also get them used to earning at least $15 an hour as sort of the bottom of what they want to earn for the rest of their careers.”
Currently, more than 100 companies participate in the internship program.
‘Birmingham has long-exemplified resilience’
“Birmingham is home. I’ve always wanted to make it better,” says Woodfin, who is seeking his third term as mayor.
“I went to Morehouse College where I was taught not only the importance of academic rigor, but being very intentional about leadership and service, and so I got intentional. I came home after college to start working in and around public service, so for almost 22 years.”
The mayor says, “What makes me optimistic is that since we’ve been a city, Birmingham has long-exemplified resilience, beginning with our legacy of social innovation during the civil rights movement.
“I think in 2025, we stand on the shoulders of all those who come before us. That optimism for me is simple.”
Woodfin says bringing the community together to maintain focus is important.
“How do we continue to collaborate? How do we identify best practices? How do we grow our economy? How do we gainfully employ people, and how do we create opportunities for people to succeed in the workplace?
“I’m going to continue to be bullish on Birmingham, and I believe that what we’ve got to get beyond is the perpetual promise, and when we start looking outward, I think that’s when we come the best version of ourselves.”
