Alabama’s two largest metros have added roughly the same number of jobs over the past five years, but not all jobs are created equal.

The Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area added a total of 21,912 jobs between 2015 and 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 3,200 of those jobs, or 14.6 percent, were classified as “food services and drinking places” jobs by the BLS.

Meanwhile, job growth in the Huntsville metro has been just as strong, if not stronger. The Huntsville metro has around 700,000 fewer people than Birmingham-Hoover, yet added nearly as many total jobs, with 21,154 new jobs between 2015 and 2019. And Huntsville is less dependent on food and drink service jobs than Birmingham, or really any other large metro in Alabama.

Only 1,200 of Huntsville’s new jobs, or less than 6 percent, are in the restaurant industry. But in Birmingham, nearly 15 percent of new jobs are in food services. The percentage is even higher in the state’s other two large metros.

“Ever since we came out of the recession back in 2009, most of the new jobs, not just in Alabama, have been jobs in leisure and hospitality sector,” said Ahmad Ijaz, an economist with the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama. “That’s one reason the recovery has been slow.

“Most of those are part time jobs with very little benefits attached to them.”

In Mobile, for instance, only 5,715 new jobs were created between 2015 and 2019, a 3.5 percent increase. 1,000 of those jobs, or 17.5 percent, were in food or drink.

Montgomery, the state’s fourth-largest metro, added 3,500 new jobs, a 2.3 percent increase. 19.2 percent of those new jobs were in food or drink.

Huntsville’s total job increase over five years is an exception in Alabama. The Rocket City’s success in bringing in new industry has been well publicized, but the metro area has increased its total job threshold by more than 10 percent since 2015.

“The jobs that are added in Huntsville are more high-skilled jobs, that add more to the GDP,” Ijaz said. “You can add enormous numbers of food jobs to an area but it does very little to the GDP.”

Huntsville’s high-skilled job growth is so rapid it might actually be creating a problem, as the city may struggle in the next few years to find the skilled labor needed to fill the positions.

Meanwhile, the Birmingham Metro increased its overall number of jobs by 4.6 percent.

The two economies are trending in opposite directions in terms of dependence on the food service industry. In all, 8.2 percent of all jobs in the Birmingham area are in food and drink, compared to 7.7 percent in Huntsville. In 2015, they were virtually tied at 7.9 percent.

Still, some of Alabama’s other major metros are even more dependent on restaurant jobs for economic growth. In some cases, that’s because those areas aren’t seeing much job growth at all.

But this kind of growth in the food and drink sector, and more broadly in leisure and hospitality, isn’t unique to Alabama, Ijaz said.

Huntsville's economy is doing well. It's adding more lots of high-skilled jobs while the rest of the state is stuck with more part-time gigs. | graphic by Ramsey Archibald

Birmingham-Hoover is far larger than the other metros, encompassing seven counties. Restaurant job data for two of the less populous counties, Blount and Walker, were not available. But those counties added a combined 816 jobs during the same time frame.

But in some areas, regardless of changes in recent years, the local economy remains far more dependent on food service jobs. No other area of the state relies on the hospitality industry for more of their paychecks than Alabama’s tourism hub at the beach.

The fastest-growing county in Alabama, Baldwin, is hope to the Daphne-Fairhope-Foley metro, and also home to sunny coastal resorts like Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.

During peak beach tourism season, more than 15 percent of all jobs in Baldwin County are in food service. In June and July 2018, the number rose to higher than 16 percent. That’s roughly double the rate of Alabama’s other large metros.

There were 47 restaurant jobs for every 1,000 people in Baldwin County in January of this year - that’s the highest mark for any metro or single county in the state.

Baldwin County, especially during the summer, has a job economy that's dominated by the food and drink industry. | graphic by Ramsey Archibald

Next on that list is Houston County, the home of Dothan, in far southeast Alabama. Houston County had 46 food and drink jobs per 1,000 people at the start of this year, according to BLS data.

Two college towns follow that. Tuscaloosa and Lee counties, the homes of Alabama and Auburn, respectively, have a lot of food jobs per capita. Food service jobs in college towns aren’t surprising, but both of these counties are also growing rapidly, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Lee is the second-fastest growing county in Alabama.

Madison County rounds out the top five with 43 restaurant jobs for every 1,000 residents.

All these new restaurant jobs are undoubtedly helping Alabama’s all-time low unemployment rate, but there are concerns, said Ijaz with CBER said.

“Everybody says this has been the slowest recovery, even though it has also been the longest recovery," he said. “One reason for that is that most of the jobs have been in the leisure and hospitality sector. These are mostly part time jobs with low or no benefits.”

But when it comes to the unemployment rate, Ijaz said these jobs don’t artificially decrease the number. After all, they are jobs.

“Any job is better than no job,” he said.