Birminghamruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Health care, medicine & research
UAB — the University of Alabama at Birmingham and UAB Health System, Children's of Alabama, St. Vincent's, Brookwood Baptist, Southern Research, a growing biotech layer
UAB is the largest single employer in the state of Alabama and the reason Birmingham's economy survived the collapse of the steel industry. It runs an academic medical centre, a medical school, a major research operation and one of the busiest hospitals in the country, and Children's of Alabama beside it is one of the largest paediatric hospitals in the United States. Clinical, research and administrative hiring is continuous, and UAB is by far the most experienced local employer at sponsoring international staff.
Banking, insurance & finance
Regions Financial (headquartered here), Protective Life (headquartered here), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, ProAssurance, ServisFirst Bancshares, a substantial legal and accounting layer
Birmingham has been a banking centre since the industrial period and Regions Financial is one of the larger US regional banks, headquartered downtown. Protective Life, now part of Dai-ichi Life, is a major insurer headquartered here, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama is one of the largest private employers in the state. This is the corporate-headquarters half of the economy and where most of the professional white-collar hiring happens.
Industrial, materials & construction
Vulcan Materials (headquartered here), McWane, Altec, BL Harbert International, American Cast Iron Pipe Company, Nucor and US Pipe operations
The furnaces are museums but the industry is not gone — it moved up the value chain. Vulcan Materials, the largest producer of construction aggregates in the United States, is headquartered here; McWane and American Cast Iron Pipe still make pipe in the district that invented the business; and Altec builds aerial equipment. It is a real engineering and manufacturing employment base and it is invisible in most descriptions of the city.
Utilities & energy
Alabama Power and its parent Southern Company, Energen's successor operations, Spire's Alabama gas utility
Alabama Power is one of the largest employers in the metro and Southern Company's presence gives Birmingham a serious energy engineering, regulatory and finance layer. Retail electricity here is a regulated monopoly — there is no supplier to choose, unlike Texas — so the relationship is with one company from the day you move in.
Technology & startups
Shipt (founded here and still operating here), Command Alkon, Fledging and the Innovation Depot ecosystem, Daxko, ProctorU
Birmingham's technology scene is small and genuinely growing, anchored by Innovation Depot — one of the larger business incubators in the South, sitting beside UAB — and by Shipt, which was founded here, sold to Target and kept its operation in the city. Salaries are lower than in Atlanta or Austin and so is everything else; for a remote worker on an out-of-state salary the arithmetic is unusually good.
Logistics, distribution & automotive supply
Amazon, the Norfolk Southern and CSX yards, the Birmingham inland port, Mercedes-Benz's Vance plant and its supplier network west of the city
Birmingham sits at a major rail junction and on the I-20/I-59 and I-65 crossing, which has made it a distribution centre for the South. Mercedes-Benz's Alabama plant at Vance is about forty minutes west and its tier-one supplier network spreads through the western metro — a significant manufacturing employment base for the region even though the plant itself is outside the county.
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