The city of Hoover gained more new residents than any other Alabama city from 1990 to 1999—20,317 people, according U.S. Census Bureau data released by the Alabama State Data Center at The University of Alabama.

Annette Watters, center director, said the census data also show that while Birmingham has retained its status as the largest city in the state, Birmingham and Gadsden were also the only two cities in Alabama’s Top 10 list that lost population through the decade. Birmingham lost about 16,480 people during the 1990s and Gadsden lost about 1,370.

“Huntsville was a close contender to Hoover in terms of growth,” noted Watters, whose center falls under the direction of the UA College of Commerce and Business Administration and its Center for Business and Economic Research. “Huntsville gained 17,500 people during that time period, going to a population of 160,372.

“Madison and Alabaster were also double-digit gainers in the nineties,” she said. “Madison gained 12,490 and Alabaster gained 10,670, in round numbers.”

However, Watters explained that a surface glance at the numerical growth doesn’t tell the entire story. While Hoover gained the most people, Helena had the biggest percent increase. Helena went from a mere 4,454 in 1990 to 10,950 in 1999—a 145.8 percent increase. Other cities in the state that have grown by more than half again what they had at the 1990 census are Madison, Millbrook, Alabaster, and Pelham. Hoover, Trussville, Fairhope, and Moody each grew more than 40 percent in nine years time.

Watters said, “Population growth of that magnitude puts pressures on the city. Government leaders have to keep up with services and current residents have to make accommodations for new residents. Whether it is a small town that is growing quickly, or a large city that is booming, fast growth usually brings both good and bad news.”

Not every prominent Alabama city saw growth in the last decade. Tuskegee, Fairfield, Homewood, Anniston, Prichard, Selma, and Bessemer, in addition to Birmingham and Gadsden, saw noticeable population declines.

Watters pointed out that these numbers are estimates for the year 1999. Data from Census 2000 have not yet been released. “When we get the actual population counts in a few months, we’ll have a more accurate idea of how our cities and towns are doing. These population estimates will be used until we have more accurate data from the recently completed census.”

The 1999 estimate for every incorporated city or town in Alabama is available from the Alabama State Data Center at UA.

The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, founded in 1919, first began offering graduate education in 1923. Its Center for Business and Economic Research was created in 1930, and since that time has engaged in research programs to promote economic development in the state while continuously expanding and refining its base of socioeconomic information.

Ten Largest Cities in Alabama

Alabama’s export statistics for 1999 could have been much lower if not for a 437.2 percent increase in exports to Austria. Since 1998, when Mercedes-Benz decided to assemble the M-class vehicle at their plant in Graz, Austria as well as at the Vance, Alabama plant, there has been a phenomenal increase in exports from Alabama to Austria.

Ahmad Ijaz

The youth labor market has recently captured the public’s attention for several reasons. Governments and businesses are interested in the transition from school to work. Teachers and counselors study the “job shopping” process through which youths settle into stable career employment. Labor market analysts are interested in the consequences of youth unemployment and racial differences in youth unemployment. Economists have analyzed the implications of statutory minimum wages. What are some of the findings from these studies?

High School Students. High school students tend to work more hours the older they are. That is, an 18-year-old student with a job might work close to 22 hours a week, whereas a 16-year-old might work only about 16 hours a week. This rise with age occurs among both males and females.

The seasonal variation in high school student employment within the calendar year is even more dramatic than the between-age-group trend. Employment activity rises sharply during the summer months and drops off during the school year. This within-year rise in employment during the summer weeks occurs at all ages for both males and females, although male students are more likely to be employed and to work more hours per week when they are employed.

The academic calendar is not the only factor driving summer employment by high schoolers. Seasonal shifts in labor demand also contribute. High school students tend to work at occupations and in industries that have busy summer seasons. Fully one-fifth of employed high school students work in food service, usually as servers, buspersons, dishwashers, cooks, and so on. The other leading occupations employing high school students include stock handlers (primarily in grocery stores), sales clerks, and recreation and amusement workers. Most high school students working in private households appear to be babysitters.

High School Dropouts. In sharp contrast to the pattern for high school students, the employment activity of young high school dropouts exhibits little seasonal variation. The large summer increase in high school student employment does not make much difference in the employment of high school dropouts.

There is, however, a very large difference in employment rates between male and female high school dropouts. In a typical week, roughly two-thirds of male dropouts are employed while only about one-third of female dropouts have a job. Moreover, employed male dropouts work three to seven hours more per week than employed female dropouts. The employment difference between male and female dropouts is much greater than the male-female difference between students. In fact, female dropouts are even less likely to be working than female students. Among those who are working, however, female dropouts work more hours per week than do female students.

Are dropouts working in the same jobs as similarly-aged students? By far the most common occupation for dropouts is food service worker—the same as for high school students. But there are also differences between the two groups. Dropouts don’t concentrate their jobs as intensely in a few sectors of the economy as do students. For example, there is a bigger percentage of dropouts than students working as cleaning service workers and a much smaller percentage working in private households.

Implications for Alabama Business. The Alabama Commerce Commission recently reported that the tourism industry provides the State of Alabama with one of its best returns on investment and recommended pursuing additional major attractions within the state. Youth workers will provide an important source of labor supply for an enhanced tourism industry. Young people have a history of success at jobs in entertainment, recreation services, eating places, and retail establishments.

The retail sector of Alabama’s economy has been a growth engine in recent years. If retailing continues to prosper, it will continue to rely on young workers to be sales workers, cashiers, and stock persons.

Young workers don’t always have a long employment tenure with their employers. They move on to other stages of their lives. The hope is that the work experiences they have as teen-agers will contribute positively to their futures. An entry-level job can instill a strong work ethic, give a young person a career direction, and teach many lessons not gained in the classroom. Alabama needs its youth workers, and young people need Alabama businesses.

 Annette Jones Watters    

Excerpted in part from Gerald S. Oettinger, “Seasonal and Sectoral Patterns in Youth Employment,” Monthly Labor Review, p. 6-11, U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It is likely to be a bleak Thanksgiving in much of Alabama, if the poverty rate estimates just released by the U.S. Census Bureau are any indication.

In the poverty estimates released today (11/22) for 1997, Shelby County is the only county in Alabama that doesn’t have double-digit poverty rates. The bureau estimated an overall poverty rate in Shelby County of about 6.8 percent in 1997. Shelby County is part of the Birmingham Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Annette Jones Watters, manager of the Alabama State Data Center at The University of Alabama, said the Census Bureau defines poverty according to guidelines set by the Office of Management and Budget.

“The poverty thresholds vary by family size and composition,” she said. “That is, a large family, and therefore every member in it, can be poor even if that family has somewhat more income than a small family. The poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated annually for inflation. There is not a separate poverty threshold for Alabama from a state in the North or the West. The official poverty definition counts money income before taxes and does not include capital gains and non-cash benefits, such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps.”

Watters said after Shelby County, the next “least-poor counties” are not enough statistically different from each other to meaningfully rank one as more or less poor than another. The “least-poor counties” in Alabama are Autauga, Baldwin, Madison, and Morgan, which are located in the Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville, and Decatur Metropolitan Statistical Areas, respectively.

According to Watters, Alabama’s poorest counties continue to be Black Belt counties with small populations.

“Perry, with 36.6 percent poverty, and Wilcox, with 36.1 percent poverty, seem to be tied for the poorest counties in Alabama. Greene, with 35.5 percent, and Sumter, with 33.1 percent, closely follow. Other Alabama counties with very high poverty rates are Macon, Lowndes, Dallas, Bullock, Conecuh, and Hale.”

Watters stressed that the new information is an estimate and not an actual count.

“The estimates have a range,” she said. “For example, the percent of Perry County’s population living in poverty could be as low as 28.4 percent or as high as 44.7 percent. The Census Bureau uses information form the Current Population Survey, the Food Stamp and Supplemental Security programs, summary data from federal income tax returns, and data from the 1990 census to derive the estimates.”

She also pointed that the just-released estimates “are much less precise than what we will learn from the long form of Census 2000. But we won’t get Census 2000 poverty data until 2002. Until then, these current estimates will be used to allocate federal funds to programs such as Head Start and numerous other programs that rely on formulas to calculate eligibility.”

But even in booming and affluent Shelby County, children fare the least well, according to Watters. About seven percent of Shelby County’s total population lives below the poverty line, but about 10 percent of the county’s children who are 17 or younger are living in poverty.

For poor counties, the plight of the children is worse. In Perry County about 45 percent of all children in the county live in poverty.

“If there is good news in this latest set of estimates, it is that poverty levels in Alabama have generally declined throughout the decade,” Watters said. “Even in very poor counties, fewer people are living in poverty now than at the beginning or the midpoint of the 1990s.”

The Alabama State Data Center, housed in the Center for Business and Economic Research at UA, is the lead agency in the state in a cooperative arrangement with the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The ASDA provides data, interpretation and analysis.

The UA Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, founded in 1919, first began offering graduate education in 1924 and has been recognized repeatedly for offering a quality business program at a reasonable cost.

A chart of the counties is available.

Reapportionment numbers released in late December 2000 gave us a first look at Alabama’s actual population growth in the 1990s.  With an unadjusted total population of 4,447,100 as of April 1, 2000, Alabama has added 406,513 residents since the 1990 census.  This 10.1 percent growth rate lagged the U.S. gain of 13.2 percent and ranked Alabama twenty-fifth among the 50 states on percent change in population during the decade.  Rapid growth in Arizona’s population pushed Alabama’s total population ranking down one notch to twenty-third.

[Population counts and rankings are accessible at http://www.census.gov.]

Migration of College Graduates

More college graduates moved out of Alabama than moved in during 1999, according to a recent study.  Professors Beth Ingram and George Neumann of the University of Iowa used Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data to calculate state-level in- and out-migration of college graduates.  An estimated 2.74 percent of all college graduates living in Alabama in 1999 had resided in a different state in 1998.  On the other hand, 5.35 percent of resident college graduates moved out of the state during the year.  Overall, Alabama saw a net loss of 2.61 percent of her college-educated residents from 1998 to 1999.  Nine states saw a higher percentage net outflow of college graduates during the year, including Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Washington.

State of Alabama and the South

Alabama’s economic progress over the 20 years from 1978 to 1997 was uneven, according to a recently released MDC Inc. study, State of the South 2000.  Both the state’s population and the number of jobs grew more slowly than the national average, with metropolitan areas far outpacing rural gains.  Among 14 southern states, Alabama ranked ninth on job growth from 1978 to 1997.  While 611,000 jobs were created in the state during this period, about 730,000 would have been created if job growth had progressed at the national rate.

The state made progress in improving its job mix, although it remained more reliant on old economy industries than most states.  During the 20-year period of the study, Alabama’s job growth flourished in retail, business and health services, transportation, and some durable manufacturing industries— including industrial machinery, electrical equipment, and motor vehicles.  But above-average job concentration in declining sectors—farming, nondurable manufacturing, and federal government— led to job losses.  As old economy industries have atrophied and new economy industries have grown, Alabama moved toward the mainstream of modern America.  With 32 high-tech employees per 1,000 workers in 1997 (compared to 45 for the United States), Alabama ranked twenty-ninth in the nation, but above average for the South.  Alabama’s 15.3 IT jobs per 1,000 and 23.4 professional, scientific, and technical services employees ranked in the top six among 14 southern states.

Foreign capital was a major impetus for growth in Alabama’s manufacturing sector.  Between 1977 and 1997, the number of foreign-owned enterprises jumped from about 100 to over 600 and employed almost 11 percent of the state’s manufacturing workers.

The State of the South report cautions that, while Alabama has made progress in improving its business mix, it must create more new economy enterprises if the pace of job growth is to accelerate.  And Alabama, like all southern states, must connect its lagging, mostly rural, areas to economic activity, with the goal of pulling all its people into the skilled labor force.

[The State of the South 2000 is available at http://www.mdcinc.org.]

Alabama’s Digital Divide

An August 2000 survey found digital inclusion increasing across states and the gap between the highest and lowest states narrowing.  Almost 770,000 (44.2 percent) of Alabama households owned computers in August 2000, up from about 580,000 households (34.3 percent) in December 1998.  According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), Alabama households with Internet access at home increased from 365,000 (21.6 percent) in 1998 to about 618,000 (35.5 percent) in 2000.  For the nation as a whole, 51 percent of all households owned computers in 2000, while 41.5 percent had Internet access.  Alabama ranked forty-fourth among the 50 states on computer ownership and forty-third on home Internet access.

Carolyn Trent

Citizens also give significantly higher priority to funding benefits for poor people and to funding environmental protection efforts than they did two decades ago.  The popularity of benefits for poor people rose 16 percent during the twenty-year period, which was marked in the last five years by major welfare reform that removed thousands of Alabamians from the welfare rolls.  Since a separate question found that 51.2 percent of respondents to the recent survey also believe there are fewer undeserving people on welfare than there were ten years ago, the higher priority given to benefits for poor people may result from a perception that the people remaining on welfare are those who truly need and deserve help.

There was a 13 percent increase in support for environmental protection.  According to UA professor and specialist in environmental studies, Ed Passerini, greater support for environmental protection may be tied, at least in part, to the passage of the Forever Wild Act and significant purchases of land for conservation throughout Alabama.  State government functions that lost priority during the last 20 years were the judicial system, including prisons (down 16 percent), support for mental health centers and mental hospitals (down 16 percent) and support for highways and roads (down 13 percent).

Results from the recent study do not seem to be directly attributable to personal self-interest.  Support for elementary and secondary schools ranked first, but only 33 percent of respondents had school-aged children attending school in Alabama.  Support for programs for older people ranked second; yet only 21 percent of those responding had someone sixty-five years old or older in their household.  Benefits for poor people ranked third, but fewer than 18.2 percent of the persons who responded had ever received either food stamps or welfare benefits.

Support for K-12 education outranked support for colleges and universities in both the 1980 and 2000 studies.  Similarly, public support for K-12 education has grown compared with support for higher education in the twenty-year period.  Citizens thought it appropriate to allocate 55 percent of the total education budget to elementary and secondary schools in 1980 and 60 percent of the education budget to K-12 in 2000.

Comparison of the 1980 and 2000 studies shows remarkable consistency with a few noteworthy changes in Alabamians’ preferences for how their tax dollars should be distributed.  The six highest rated programs in 1980 were also the six highest rated programs in 2000.  Among these, elementary and secondary schools, benefits for poor people, and support for colleges and universities received higher priority in 2000.  Highways and roads, mental health centers and mental hospitals, and benefits for older people, received lower priority in 2000 than they did in 1980.

Results of the recent study are from a telephone survey of a probability sample of 467 adult Alabamians completed in the late summer of 2000.  Respondents were asked how they would allocate a hypothetical $100 of Alabama tax funds among ten different programs/services that the state currently funds.  They were told they could allocate zero dollars or as much as the full $100 to any program or service.  They were also told that they could divide the $100 among the ten programs in any way that they thought appropriate.  The accompanying table shows the average amount allocated to each program, its rank among the ten programs presented for both the current study and for the one conducted 20 years ago, and the percentage change in the dollar amounts allocated.

The 2000 study is a partial replication of a study published by Alabama Business in 1980.  The earlier study, a mailed survey of 1,015 Alabamians, also asked respondents to allocate a hypothetical $100 of tax funds among state programs and services.

The budget allocation methodology used in the two studies has several limitations, which should be considered as results are interpreted.  First, the ten program areas presented to respondents do not represent all current or potential uses of state revenues.  Public health, for example, is omitted.  Had it or another use of state dollars been included, a different set of budget priorities might have emerged.  Second, this approach assumes a “fixed pot” of state dollars.  Since some of Alabama’s programs are supported by special earmarked taxes, in the real world these ten programs do not all directly compete against each other in the annual budget process.  Finally, it is unlikely that respondents had accurate knowledge of the relative costs of state-supported programs and services.  The results are best viewed as indicative of priorities rather than as well-informed judgments about exactly how state dollars should be allocated.

Lucinda Lee Roff, David L. Klemmack, Debra M. McCallum, Michael B. Conaway