Birmingham, Alabama, United States

🇺🇸 Birmingham is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama, and is located in the north central region of the state. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County and part of the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Statistical Area. Birmingham serves as an important regional hub and is associated with the Deep South, Piedmont, and Appalachian regions of the nation.

Birmingham was founded in 1871, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, through the merger of three pre-existing farm towns, notably, Elyton. It grew from there, annexing many more of its smaller neighbors, into an industrial and railroad transportation centre with a focus on mining, the iron and steel industry, and railroading. Birmingham was named for Birmingham, England, one of that nation's major industrial cities. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. The city may have been planned as a place where cheap, non-unionized, and often African-American labor from rural Alabama could be employed in the city's steel mills and blast furnaces, giving it a competitive advantage over industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast.

From its founding through the end of the 1960s, Birmingham was a primary industrial centre of the South. The pace of Birmingham's growth during the period from 1881 through 1920 earned its nicknames The Magic City and The Pittsburgh of the South. Much like Pittsburgh, Birmingham's major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry, where rails and railroad cars were both manufactured in Birmingham. In the field of railroading, the two primary hubs of railroading in the Deep South were nearby Atlanta and Birmingham, beginning in the 1860s and continuing through to the present day. The economy diversified during the later half of the twentieth century. Though the manufacturing industry maintains a strong presence in Birmingham, other businesses and industries such as banking, telecommunications, transportation, electrical power transmission, medical care, college education, and insurance have risen in stature. Mining in the Birmingham area is no longer a major industry with the exception of coal mining. Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centres in the Southeastern United States and is also one of the largest banking centres in the United States. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial, along with five other Fortune 1000 companies.

In higher education, Birmingham has been the location of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine (formerly the Medical College of Alabama) and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry since 1947. Since that time it has also obtained a campus of the University of Alabama, University of Alabama at Birmingham (founded circa 1969), one of three main campuses of the University of Alabama System. It is also home to three private institutions: Samford University, Birmingham-Southern College, and Miles College. Between these colleges and universities, the Birmingham area has major colleges of medicine, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, law, engineering, and nursing. Birmingham is also the headquarters of the Southeastern Conference, one of the major U.S. collegiate athletic conferences.

Steel From Birmingham's early days onward, the steel industry has always played a crucial role in the local economy. Though the steel industry no longer has the same prominence it once held in Birmingham, steel production and processing continue to play a key role in the economy. Steel products manufacturers American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO) and McWane are based in the city. Several of the nation's largest steelmakers, including CMC Steel, U.S. Steel, and Nucor, also have a major presence in Birmingham. In recent years, local steel companies have announced about $100 million worth of investment in expansions and new plants in and around the city. Vulcan Materials Company, a major provider of crushed stone, sand, and gravel used in construction, is based in Birmingham.

Biotechnology In the 1970s and 1980s, Birmingham's economy was transformed by investments in bio-technology and medical research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and its adjacent hospital. The UAB Hospital is a Level I trauma centre providing health care and breakthrough medical research. UAB is now the area's largest employer and the second largest in Alabama with a workforce of about 18,750 as of 2011. Health care services providers HealthSouth, Surgical Care Affiliates and Diagnostic Health Corporation are headquartered in the city. Caremark Rx was also founded in the city.

Banking Birmingham is a leading banking centre and is the location of the headquarters of Regions Financial Corporation. Banks with over a 5% market share of deposits in Birmingham are Regions Financial Corporation, PNC Financial Services, Servisfirst Bank, and Wells Fargo.

Nearly a dozen smaller banks are headquartered in the Magic City, such as Superior Bancorp and Cadence Bank. As of 2009, the finance & banking sector in Birmingham employed 1,870 financial managers, 1,530 loan officers, 680 securities commodities and financial services sales agents, 380 financial analysts, 310 financial examiners, 220 credit analysts, and 130 loan counsellors.

In 2012, Birmingham was the 9th largest banking hub in the United States by the amount of locally headquartered deposits. In 2014, Birmingham was the 10th largest banking center.

Construction and engineering Birmingham is a powerhouse of construction and engineering companies, including BE&K, Brasfield & Gorrie, Robins & Morton, and B.L. Harbert International which routinely are included in the Engineering News-Record lists of top design and international construction firms.

Beverages Two of the largest soft-drink bottlers in the United States, each with more than $500 million in sales per year, are located in Birmingham. The Buffalo Rock Company, founded in 1901, was formerly a maker of just ginger ale, but now it is a major bottler for the Pepsi Cola Company. Coca-Cola Bottling Company United, founded in 1902, is the third-largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the U.S.

Other large companies AT&T has a major nexus in Birmingham, supported by a skyscraper downtown as well as several large operational centre buildings and a data centre.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, Protective Life, ProAssurance, and Liberty National are headquartered in Birmingham and employ many people in Greater Birmingham.

Birmingham has seen a noticeable decrease in the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city, due to mergers, moves, and buy-outs. In 2000, there were 10 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city, while in 2014 there was only 1, Regions Bank. Birmingham used to be home to more than 30 publicly traded companies, but in 2011 there were only 15. This number has increased since, but not significantly. Some companies such as Zoe's Kitchen were founded and operated in Birmingham, but moved their headquarters. Birmingham has rebounded with the growth of companies like HealthSouth, Alabama Power Company, Hibbett Sports, Autocar Company, and Books-A-Million. Food companies such as Chester's, Jack's, Grapico, Red Diamond, Milo's Hamburgers, and Yogurt Mountain are also based in Birmingham.

Best places to work and income The Birmingham metropolitan area has consistently been rated as one of America's best places to work and earn a living based on the area's competitive salary rates and relatively low living expenses. In 2006, Salary.com ranked Birmingham second in the nation for building personal net worth, based on local salary rates, living expenses, and unemployment rates.

A 2006 study by American City Business Journals calculated Birmingham's "combined personal income" (the sum of all money earned by all residents of an area in a year) at $48.1 billion.

Taxes and government Birmingham's sales tax, which also applies fully to groceries, is 10% and is the highest tax rate of the nation's 100 largest cities.

Although Jefferson County's bankruptcy filing was the largest government bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2011, Birmingham remains solvent.

Largest companies In 2021, Birmingham's largest public companies by market capitalization were Regions Bank (RF, $14.61 billion), Vulcan Materials (VMC, $8.45 billion), Energen (EGN, $6.47 billion), Protective Life (PL, $5.47 billion), and HealthSouth (HLS, $3.15 billion). All were listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Energen sold one of its largest subsidiaries, Alagasco, and Protective Life was bought by Dai-ichi Life and removed from stock exchanges. If Alabama Power was considered independent of the Southern Company who are headquartered in Atlanta, it would be the largest company with more than $5.9 billion in revenue in 2014.

In 2021, Birmingham's largest private companies by annual revenue and employees were O'Neal Steel ($2.66 billion; 550 employees), EBSCO Industries ($2.5 billion; 1,220 employees), Drummond Coal ($2.4 billion; 1,380 employees), Brasfield & Gorrie, LLC ($2.2 billion; 973 employees), and McWane ($1.7 billion, 620 employees).

Education Noteworthy institutions of higher education in greater Birmingham include the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Samford University (includes the Cumberland School of Law), Birmingham School of Law, Miles College, the independent Miles Law School, Jefferson State Community College, Birmingham-Southern College, University of Montevallo (in Shelby County), Lawson State Community College, and Virginia College in Birmingham, the largest career college based in Birmingham.