MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama's skilled trades workforce is growing faster than all but five states, according to a new national report. The state ranks sixth for skilled trades employment growth, with an 11.3% increase from 2019 to 2025, and leads every other state in the Southeast.
The findings come from the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades, a coalition formed this year by BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford Motor Company and Google, which more than a dozen other companies have since joined. The Alabama Department of Commerce highlighted the results on Oct. 9.
How Alabama compares
The five fastest-growing states are all in the West, led by Arizona and Utah. Alabama came in just ahead of its Southern neighbors.
Rank | State | Growth, 2019–2025 |
|---|---|---|
1 | Arizona | 22.6% |
2 | Utah | 19.9% |
3 | Alaska | 16.8% |
4 | Idaho | 16.3% |
5 | Nevada | 12.0% |
6 | Alabama | 11.3% |
7 | Florida | 11.1% |
10 | Tennessee | 10.4% |
14 | Georgia | 7.4% |
Not every state is growing. Sixteen states lost skilled trades workers over the same period.
Alabama by the numbers
According to the report, Alabama has:
- 366,240 skilled trades workers
- About 984 skilled trades workers moving in from other states each year, on average
- 21.4% of its trades workforce age 55 or older
- Projected trades job growth of 8.1% from 2024 to 2034
The report gives each state a demand score and a supply score. Alabama scored 57 on demand, where a higher number means more pressure from employers, and 50 on supply, where a lower number means fewer available workers. For comparison, Florida had the highest demand score in the country at 95.
The jobs in highest demand in Alabama include industrial machinery mechanics, tool and die makers, stationary engineers and boiler operators, avionics technicians, and aircraft mechanics.
What counts as a skilled trade
The report covers 124 skilled trades occupations, and it is broader than construction. Core building trades such as electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters, roofers, painters and sheet metal workers are included. So are maintenance and repair technicians, production workers like machinists and welders, transportation workers and engineering technicians. Growth figures are based on federal Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational employment data.
That mix matters in Alabama. The state's highest-demand trades jobs, listed above, lean toward manufacturing and aerospace rather than building construction.
The national gap
The headline growth hides a shortage. Nationally, the report finds that training programs produce about 55 workers for every 100 that employers need.
More than 18 million Americans work in the skilled trades, which contributed an estimated $3.8 trillion to U.S. economic output in 2025. The report projects about 1.7 million skilled trades job openings every year through 2035.
To close the gap, the report lays out four priorities: improving the quality and results of training programs, better connecting the systems that prepare people for the trades, helping people learn about and find their way into trade careers, and planning workforce spending around when and where the demand will actually hit.
Alabama's pipeline
State leaders point to several programs that feed the trades workforce:
- Career tech in K-12 schools, with $250 million committed across the last two state education budgets
- The Alabama Office of Apprenticeship, part of the Alabama Department of Workforce, which works with more than 500 companies to train people in more than 150 occupations
- Alabama Industrial Development Training (AIDT), the Commerce Department's training arm, which has trained more than 1 million workers for companies moving to or expanding in the state
Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair said Alabama is recruiting manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and defense companies that rely on skilled technicians and tradespeople. She said the trades growth shows the state's economic development and workforce strategies are working together.
Tech companies are pointing to the same need. Meta's Dina Powell McCormick, quoted in the Commerce Department's announcement, said "America needs hundreds of thousands of electricians, welders and fiber technicians to build AI infrastructure."