BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama has more college-educated adults than it did 10 years ago, but the gains – and the wages tied to them – vary sharply across the state, according to a new report from the Alabama Commission on Higher Education.
The State and Regional Workforce Profiles report compares two points in time, 2014 and 2024, for Alabama, other states and the nation as a whole.
It also examines how education, wages and labor force participation differ across Alabama’s seven workforce regions.
Patrick Kelly, ACHE’s Assistant Director for Workforce Alignment, said those metrics answer three basic questions.
“How educated are we? Are we participating? And what do we get in return?” Kelly said.
ACHE has produced regional workforce reports for several years, but this is the first time the agency has compared Alabama’s progress with other states.
Kelly said that broader comparison matters because Alabama can improve its own numbers without gaining ground nationally if other states are improving faster.
“With snapshots, you get our current ranking, but it’s an ongoing competition,” he said. “Everybody can improve, and you can improve as well, but you can still lose your competitive advantage.”
Alabama’s education numbers show both sides of that equation.
Educational attainment
The share of working-age adults in Alabama with a bachelor’s degree or higher increased from 24.2% in 2014 to 29.3% in 2024. But Alabama still trailed the national rate of 37.2% and ranked 42nd among the states, up only one place from 2014.
Alabama made its biggest gain in associate degrees. The share of adults with an associate degree rose from 8.7% to 9.8%, moving the state from 32nd to 23rd nationally. Alabama’s rate was also slightly higher than the national average of 9.2% in 2024.
The wage findings were less encouraging.
Wages
Alabama’s median wages for full-time workers increased between 2014 and 2024, but not as much as wages nationally. The report’s wage index, which compares Alabama with the U.S. average, fell from 89 in 2014 to 83 in 2024. Alabama’s national ranking for full-time wages dropped from 37th to 44th.
Workers with more education still earned more than workers with less education. In 2024, median pay in Alabama was about $40,000 for workers with only a high school diploma, $49,000 for workers with an associate degree and $64,311 for workers with a bachelor’s degree.
“Education matters,” Kelly said. “In every state in the U.S., the South, in Alabama, wages are higher at every level of education.”
But Alabama workers earned less than the national median at every education level.
The report also found an unusual pattern in how wages changed in Alabama over the decade. After adjusting for inflation, pay increased for workers with less education but fell for those with associate and bachelor’s degrees.
Taken together, the findings show that gains in educational attainment were not matched by similar gains in the wages paid to college-educated workers.
Alabama’s declines were sharper than the broader pattern. Nationally, inflation-adjusted wages rose for workers with associate and bachelor’s degrees.
Across Southern states, associate-degree wages were nearly flat, while bachelor’s-degree wages declined modestly.
Kelly said ACHE aims to identify where education and workforce needs are out of balance, including whether Alabama is producing the right mix of credentials and focusing enough on college degrees that pay off in the state.
Labor force participation
Education and wages are only part of the picture. Labor force participation is the third measure – and one where Alabama continues to struggle.
The percentage of Alabama adults ages 25 to 64 who were working or actively looking for work increased from 71.8% to 73.5% between 2014 and 2024. But Alabama ranked 47th among the states in both years. The national rate was 79.2% in 2024.
Kelly said focusing on adults ages 25 to 64 provides a clearer view of the core working-age population by excluding many retirees and younger people who may still be in school.
Alabama’s seven workforce regions
Those statewide figures provide the broad picture, but the report centers on Alabama’s seven workforce regions and the different education and labor needs within them. The regional breakdowns show how statewide averages can hide major differences from one area to another.
The three measures – educational attainment, median wages and labor force participation – vary widely among the regions.
The Central Six workforce region, which includes much of the Birmingham metro area, had the highest share of adults with bachelor’s degrees or higher, at 36.2%. It also had the highest labor force participation rate, 76.7%, and the highest median wage, $55,876.
In the East region, which includes Calhoun, Etowah, Cherokee, Talladega, Randolph, Cleburne and Clay counties, only 17.7% of working-age adults had bachelor’s degrees or higher. Its labor force participation rate was 68.9%, and its median wage was $44,486.
Large differences also exist within individual regions. Some Huntsville-area communities had bachelor’s degree rates above 40% and median wages above $60,000, while nearby counties had much lower education levels and wages.
The contrasts show why a region that appears strong overall may still contain communities with very different needs.
Kelly said the regional and local breakdowns are meant to show where problems are most severe and where solutions may need to differ.
“It’s really to understand our relative weaknesses, where we’re farthest behind, how we can intervene to improve,” he said. “And that tends to happen more effectively these days locally.”
ACHE Executive Director Jim Purcell said the data can help local officials, employers and education leaders decide what their communities need most.
“There’s not a statewide solution anymore,” Purcell said. “All the easy government solutions where you could just paint everything with one brush are gone.”