Mobile Metro Area Report

Alabama Business Confidence Index™

Fourth Quarter 2025

Moderately Confident Forecasts for Overall Growth in Fourth Quarter

Mobile business leaders are forecasting growth in Q4 2025 with moderate confidence, resulting in an ABCI of 57.0. Five of the six component indexes were expansionary. Though expectations for an improved statewide economy and increased industry sales were the highest, all five indexes indicate moderate to strong confidence in those forecasts. The one index that was not expansionary this quarter was industry hiring, which registered at a neutral 50.0, indicating overall expectations for a continuation of last quarter’s hiring levels in Q4 2025.

Index above 50 indicates positive outlook as compared to last quarter.
Index below 50 indicates negative outlook compared to last quarter.

Mobile Component Index Analysis

• Alabama Economy: The Q4 2025 Alabama economic index registered at 60.9, indicating strongly confident expectations for an improved statewide economy compared to Q3 2025. Only 6 percent expect the Alabama economy to worsen this quarter.
• US Economy: Mobile business leaders are also anticipating overall better conditions in the fourth quarter U.S. economy, though with a moderately confident index of 57.8. A quarter of metro panelists are forecasting worse conditions compared to Q3 2025, while 50 percent are anticipating better conditions in the national economy.
• Industry Sales: Sales was the highest industry index in Q4 2025 with a moderately confident expansionary index of 59.4. Half of the panelists expect an increase in their sales this quarter, while just under 19 percent expect a decrease.
• Industry Profits: The Q4 2025 profits index was also expansionary with an index of 57.8, indicating moderately confident expectations for an overall increase in profits compared to last quarter’s levels.
• Industry Hiring: Over 80 percent of Mobile panelists expect to continue hiring this quarter at the same rate as Q3 2025, resulting in an overall neutral hiring outlook of 50.0.
• Industry Capital Expenditures: The metro’s capital expenditures index registered at a moderately expansionary level of 56.2 this quarter, with just under 40 percent of panelists anticipating increased capital spending this quarter.

ABCI Mobile in Context

Mobile’s panelists are currently forecasting overall economic growth compared to last quarter with a moderately confident ABCI of 57.0. They also had expansionary outlooks in Q2 2025 and Q2 2024, though the level of confidence was slightly lower, as shown by their ABCIs of 54.4 and 52.8, respectively. Several recent quarters do not have data due to insufficient participation, but these few optimistic ABCIs from the last two years show glimpses of improved confidence compared to 2023, when all four of the metro’s ABCIs were contractionary or neutral.

This quarter, all five of Alabama’s largest metro areas are forecasting overall growth with mild to moderate confidence. The only contractionary index of all the metros was Birmingham’s US outlook (43.5), but all of the other component indexes across the metros were expansionary or neutral. All metros but Montgomery are forecasting increased sales with strong confidence, but Mobile led in expansionary expectations for the US and Alabama economies. As a result, Mobile had the highest ABCI this quarter. More details can be found in the Statewide ABCI report.

The Center for Business and Economic Research would like to thank the Alabama business executives who completed the fourth quarter 2025 ABCI™ survey. This is the 96th consecutive quarter this report has been recorded, and it would not have been possible without your participation.
Be sure to log in during the December 1–15 survey window to record your opinions about economic prospects and industry performance looking ahead to the first quarter of 2026.

This report was produced by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business.

Analysis provided by Susannah Robichaux, Socioeconomic Analyst, Center for Business and Economic Research, Culverhouse College of Business, The University of Alabama.