The Inside Scoop

Huntsville is the fastest growing city in Alabama. It added more people to its population than any other city in Alabama in 2018. In 2010, the metropolitan area had a population of 417,593, making it the fourth most populous metropolitan in Alabama.₁ Eight years later, Huntsville metropolitan grew to 462,693 which propelled city’s population beyond Montgomery making it the second largest city in the state. Forecasters believe Huntsville’s strong growth will surpass Birmingham in the next five years to become the state’s largest city.

Forbes list Huntsville as the No.1 place for engineers with an average mean salary of $102,766. ₂ Over 20,000 residence hold an engineering degree in the area and almost 40% have a four-year degree. Most of Huntsville’s engineering work is done at Cummings Research Park, the second largest research park in the country and the fourth largest in the world.₃ It is also home to over 300 hundred tech companies. See list (URL). Some of its newest members include the Amazon’s Blue Origin Rocket Engine Factory and Facebook’s Data center. Cummings Research Park spans across 3,843 acres and employs over 30,000 people. To keep up with the demand for STEM educated employees among the local talent, Huntsville recently built a new school for future STEM students, The Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering. This will be free to qualified 10th and 11th graders across the state. ₄ Also chipping to help the effort in luring more high tech individuals, Decatur, Huntsville’s neighboring city has implemented a plan to repay $3,000 each year of a STEM’s graduate’s student loan, up to $15,000 if they choose to live in Decatur’s city limits. ₅

As of December 2019, the typical rent for the Huntsville area was $877 a month, an average of $857 for a two-bedroom apartment. With the sudden growth of the city’s population and skyrocketing job market, the demand for new construction and rental units have driven the prices for both rental and home ownership. Just last year, rent increased to over 12% and home prices were 6.6% higher than the previous year. This shortage of homes has caught the attention of many national home builders. While most of these builders see the Huntsville as a great opportunity to expand here locally, some were frustrated with the shortage of local construction laborers. This has led to a new initiative called, North Alabama Homebuilding Academy, funded by $20 increase in the building permit fee. The academy offers free training to 18 or 17 year old with a high school diploma. Graduates are expected to earn around $16 per hour. ₆ Each class runs 4 weeks during the day or 8 weeks for evening classes. This includes $200 of free gear and equipment to jumpstart their bright future. With classes already being full by the first day of school, it has brought a welcome hope to new home builders. A few months ago, I interviewed one of the home builders from the Tennessee area. He had hoped to start a small home building operations in the Huntsville area, but said there was just not enough talented construction workers to get his business off the ground. He hinted that he would like to try again if talent was more available. Let’s hope these programs become successful in the short term.

Darin Buelow, a global location strategy leader for Deloitte gave a presentation which, according to his numbers, Huntsville area must fill about 25,000 new jobs by 2023. This demand comes at a time when the area is seeing a historic unemployment rate of 2.1 percent. Many of these jobs will come from engineering, cyber and the technology industry. Not only will these jobs be new positions but also the area is dealing with a local aging and a retiring workforce. Although University of Alabama Huntsville is known for their top notch STEM programs, which boast an 88 percent job placement, there still seems to be a short fall in finding good talent. Huntsville has no choice but to expand their outreach in search for experience talent from other states across the U.S. While this is being advertised by companies that have a large footprint in other tech states such as California, a greater effort needs to be made among state and local leaders. ₇

Most of us who have lived and worked here for the past decade see the many challenges that Huntsville will face in the coming few years. Not only will there be a crunch in the local housing market, filling vacant high tech jobs, but infrastructure will need to be addressed too, especially with the slow pace in keeping up with the local traffic. Locals tend to blame Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT), which is considered by many as a bias political tool for politicians. Reading the local forums, you get the impression that for years, ALDOT has hindered and cheated Huntsville out of Huntsville’s fair share of the gas tax while allowing the rest of the Alabama to prosper in their city’s road projects. Huntsville’s Mayor Battle has been working behind the scenes to get us more money from ALDOT, but it has come at a cost, literally - with an increase in the local sales taxes. With plans now in the works to improve the local infrastructure, the question now becomes, how fast can Huntsville implement the proposed changes to keep up with the growth. In a local interview by AL.com, Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle was quoted as saying, “It is a challenge…. As we continue to grow and we continue to prosper, we'll be able to keep up with the growth and we'll be able to build ahead of the growth so that we can keep that same quality of life tomorrow that we have today. Our greatest asset is our (average) 18-20-minute commute to and from work. If we can keep that and keep those other quality of life issues in place, we'll grow and we'll prosper." ₈ A few years ago, John Cooper, director of Alabama Transportation recommended $250 million to improve traffic flow in the Huntsville area. While this sounds like a lot of money for improvement, Huntsville was on the hook to raise $125 million in own local taxes to pay half of the road improvements. ₉ Also dipping in our newly increased gasoline tax, Governor Ivey did allocate some money to expand an additional lane on interstate 565, but in all honestly, this was a drop in the bucket as the cost ($17 million) to widen the road was minimal, especially when comparing Mobile’s request for a billion dollars to build a new bridge. All this money being proposed to the fourth largest city with a declining population.

Yes, there is a threefold crisis developing, but in many ways, Huntsville can choose to make something good out of this before it hits a breaking point. I would rather enjoy working and living in a vibrant and growing city and facing its growing pains than living in a city that is on the decline and where prosperity is bleak. Huntsville’s time to shine is now. We just need to pick up the pace before all the good things we enjoy today become too much of a nuisance that companies and people look elsewhere to relocate.

For those who are interested in moving here, Huntsville has a lot to offer and enjoy. Our list of recognition seems to grow each year. Recently we were rated the 4th lowest cost of living city in the US by Business Insider and the 10th best city to buy a home by Niche. Livability ranks us #1 tech Hotspots for STEM jobs and 40th best city to live. Nerd Wallet gives Huntsville a spot down at No. 2 for the best place to find tech jobs. U.S News has us at #11 best place to live while Wallet Hubs rates Huntsville as the 23rd best place to live and Trulia ranks Huntsville as the #1 best tech city to live in America.

To see more articles about living in Huntsville, please visit us at www.huntsvillescoop.com

(1) Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsville,_Alabama

(2) Forbes, The Top 10 cites for engineers, https://www.forbes.com/pictures/fjle45leeg/no-1-huntsville-alabama-2/#3f7521bb39cc

(3) https://cummingsresearchpark.com/about

(4) Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering Makes Milestone Announcements, June 28, 2019, https://www.huntsvilleal.gov/alabama-school-of-cyber-technology-and-engineering-makes-milestone-announcements/

(5) Huntsville area facing labor market crunch, analysis says, Updated Nov 27, 2019, By Paul Gattis, https://www.al.com/news/2019/11/huntsville-area-facing-labor-market-crunch-analysis-says.html

(6) Shortage of homebuilders leads to new construction school, BY ELIJAH BAKER, OCTOBER 8, 2019https://whnt.com/2019/10/07/shortage-of-homebuilders-leads-to-new-construction-school/

(7) North Alabama homebuilding academy exceeds class demands, Updated: Jan 17, 2020 By: Alexis Scott https://www.waaytv.com/content/news/North-Alabama-Homebuilding-Academy-exceeds-class-demands--567086251.html.

(8) Huntsville area facing labor market crunch, analysis says, Updated Nov 27, 2019, By Paul Gattis, https://www.al.com/news/2019/11/huntsville-area-facing-labor-market-crunch-analysis-says.html

(9) State highway director offers $125M for Huntsville roads -- but there's a catch, Updated Mar 07, 2019; By Steve Doyle, https://www.al.com/breaking/2013/12/aldot_director_offers_125m_for.html