If a metric does not follow the same people over time and does not reference their starting position, it is a prosperity indicator, not a mobility indicator. Both belong on the table — but only one tells you whether a person born at the bottom is actually moving up.
You can post record job numbers while mobility is flat. A cross-sectional snapshot hides who is churning and who is stuck. The anchors below are organized so the room can tell the difference — and pull the levers that matter.
Filter by track:
Tier 1 · True mobility
Indicators that measure movement
Longitudinal · referenced to a starting position. Each card includes where Birmingham can pull the number so this framework becomes an operational one-pager, not a slide.
Do kids out-earn their parents? Do they change their rank?
Intergenerational
+9.7% vs −6.2%
True mobilityCohort born 1978–83
Absolute upward mobility · Birmingham vs U.S.
Children raised by Birmingham's lowest-quintile families out-earn their parents in real terms by 9.7%. The same national cohort earns 6.2% less than theirs. This is Chetty's absolute-mobility measure — the same families tracked from childhood into adulthood.
Opportunity Atlas · Chetty et al.
Where Birmingham can pull this
Opportunity Atlas — tract-level, downloadable; can be mapped to Birmingham neighborhoods.
Bottom → Top quintile odds
True mobilityCohort born 1978–83
The 'American Dream' transition rate
Odds a child born in the poorest fifth of families reaches the richest fifth as an adult. National average is ~7.5%; in high-mobility metros it exceeds 10%, in low-mobility Southern metros it drops below 5%. The cleanest single mobility number.
Opportunity Atlas · quintile transition matrix
Where Birmingham can pull this
Opportunity Atlas Q1→Q5 transition · Birmingham commuting zone (verify local figure before summit).
Rank-rank slope
True mobilityCohort born 1978–83
Relative mobility (IGE)
How tightly a child's income rank tracks their parents'. Lower = more mobility. The U.S. sits near 0.34 (high stickiness); Denmark ~0.15. The rank-rank slope is the standard research measure of how much your starting position determines where you end up.
Chetty–Hendren rank-rank estimates
Where Birmingham can pull this
Opportunity Atlas rank-rank series · Jefferson County commuting zone.
Same person, earnings over time. The EDO / workforce time-scale.
Placement tells you someone got a job. Progression tells you whether they are still there in 18 months and earning more. The right question for workforce programs is 'what were they earning at intake, and what are they earning 24 months later?' — same individual, real dollars.
Framework · Urban Institute; Opportunity America
Where Birmingham can pull this
Alabama UI wage records (via ADOL data-sharing) matched to program rosters. Quarterly wage panel.
18-month retention past self-sufficiency
True mobilityMIT LW 2024 · panel forward
Share still employed above a livable wage threshold
Not 'did they get placed' but 'are they still there, above the self-sufficiency wage, 18 months later.' Jefferson County's self-sufficiency wage for one adult + one child is roughly $27/hr (MIT Living Wage 2024). Placement without retention is churn.
MIT Living Wage · UI wage matching
Where Birmingham can pull this
UI wage records + MIT Living Wage threshold; report as % of intake cohort still ≥ threshold at Q6.
Income parity without wealth parity is not mobility.
Asset & wealth
Homeownership gap
True mobility2020–2024 ACS
Black vs white homeownership · Jefferson County
Homeownership is the primary vehicle of wealth accumulation in America. Nationally the Black–white ownership gap is ~28 points (44% vs 72%). Jefferson County's gap tracks close to national. Income parity without ownership parity leaves the wealth gap intact.
ACS 5-Year · tenure by race
Where Birmingham can pull this
ACS Table B25003B/H · Jefferson County — pull directly; also HMDA 2023 for flow (new mortgages by race).
HMDA denial-rate gap
True mobility2023 HMDA (verify local figure)
Mortgage denial · Black vs white applicants · Jefferson County
The flow side of the wealth story: even at similar incomes, Black applicants are denied mortgages at materially higher rates. This is a same-applicant-controlled measure and one of the sharpest current-year capital-access signals available.
HMDA 2023 · CFPB / FFIEC
Where Birmingham can pull this
HMDA Loan/Application Register · Jefferson County MSA · action_taken by race, controlling for income band.
Racial wealth ratio ≈ 6:1
True mobilitySCF 2022 · released 2023
White vs Black median household net worth · U.S.
White families hold roughly six times the wealth of Black families at the median (~$285K vs ~$45K, SCF 2022). Income parity can coexist with enormous wealth disparity — which is why any mobility conversation that stops at income is incomplete.
Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances
Where Birmingham can pull this
SCF is national; use as national benchmark. Local proxy: ACS wealth-adjacent (home equity, ownership) + HMDA flow.
Cross-class friendship — the most actionable finding in the field.
Economic connectedness
Cross-class friendship
True mobility2022 (Facebook cohort, still current release)
Economic Connectedness (EC) · Chetty 2022
The share of a lower-income person's friends who are higher-income. Chetty's 2022 Nature papers found EC out-predicts school quality and family structure for upward mobility. It is the single most actionable mobility variable — a city can deliberately engineer where people work, learn, and gather.
Chetty et al., Nature 2022 · Social Capital Atlas
Where Birmingham can pull this
Opportunity Insights Social Capital Atlas · zip- and county-level EC scores for Jefferson County (verify local figure).
Economic success · power & autonomy · being valued in community.
Multidimensional lens
3 pillars
True mobilityFramework · updated 2023
Multidimensional mobility · Urban Institute frame
Urban Institute organizes mobility into three measurable dimensions: (1) economic success, (2) power & autonomy, (3) being valued in community. Reading a track through all three prevents the whole conversation from collapsing into 'more jobs, more income.' Each pillar has published indicator sets.
Urban Institute · Boosting Upward Mobility
Where Birmingham can pull this
Urban Institute Upward Mobility Framework — county-level indicator set already published for Jefferson County.
Tier 2 · Prosperity proxies
Useful context — but not mobility
Aggregate, cross-sectional. They tell you the economy is busy. They do not tell you who moved. Kept because they size the field — labeled clearly so no one confuses them for the real thing.
Income · GDP · business stock
$46,051 vs $78,538
Proxy2020–2024 ACS · BEA 2024
Median household income · Birmingham vs U.S.
A ~$32,000 annual gap per household. Jefferson County's GDP per capita (~$98K) beats the U.S. (~$86K) — high productivity, low household income is the exact gap small-business growth is meant to close. Cross-sectional snapshot, not mobility.
ACS 5-Year · BEA CAGDP2
$92.4B · 28%
Proxy2024
Metro GDP · share of Alabama's economy
Birmingham metro produces more than 28% of Alabama's GDP. This is the state's productivity engine — the backdrop against which every other number should be read.
BEA CAGDP2
1,149 · 47% < $50K
Proxy2025
Black-owned businesses · nearly half earn under $50K
1,149 Black businesses reached one-by-one in the BBC. 60% have no full-time employees beyond the founder; 47.3% earn under $50K in annual revenue. Stock (not flow) — the runway from solo to employer is the wealth question.
Birmingham Black Business Census
Capital access
$517K · 26 loans · 85%
Proxy2025
¡HICA! / Camino Loan Fund
$516,996 deployed across 26 loans to Hispanic and immigrant-owned businesses at an 85% approval rate. When capital is offered in the right language and underwritten the right way, demand shows up and loans get repaid.
¡HICA! Camino Loan Fund Portfolio
4.3× density gap
Proxy2025
Commercial density · densest vs sparsest zip
Employer firms per square mile vary 4.3× between Birmingham's densest and sparsest zip codes. Overlay that on the 27 Commercial Revitalization Districts and you can see, block by block, where capital has been designated to go — and where it hasn't.
COB Major Employers Directory V4
Entrepreneurship & growth
~4,860
Proxy2025
New business applications · 2025
Estimated City of Birmingham new business filings in 2025 (~38% share of Jefferson County). The city produces founders at scale — the open question is how many become employer firms that hire.
U.S. Census BFS · Jefferson County
644 firms · 15,591 jobs · $2.68B
Proxy2022–2025
New employer cohort since the federal survey closed
New employer firms that first appeared in the directory after the 2022 federal ABS window — a ~9% expansion. Central City, Five Points South, and Glen Iris are absorbing the most. Momentum is post-pandemic, not pre.
COB Major Employers Directory V4 · 2025-11-21
72.3% · 57.9%
Proxy2025
Black business economy · industry concentration · women-owned
72.3% of Black-owned businesses concentrate in just 7 industries; 57.9% are women-owned. The shape of the economy today — and where diversification would compound wealth fastest.
Birmingham Black Business Census
Neighborhoods & landscape
7,117 · 3,997 in / 3,120 out
Proxy2025
Employer firms · inside city vs adjacent municipalities
Of 7,117 employer firms in the Birmingham postal area, 3,997 sit inside the city's 99 neighborhoods and 3,120 are absorbed by adjacent municipalities. The spatial pattern of who counts as 'Birmingham' — and who pays whose taxes.
COB Major Employers Directory V4
2,998
Proxy2025
Legacy businesses · 25+ years, ≤20 employees
Lakeview, Five Points South, and Avondale are the enduring corridors. Bromberg & Co. dates to 1836. Lasting a generation in Birmingham is a path that has been walked thousands of times — it can be walked again.
Lonnie Hannon, PhD · Independent research
27 CRDs · 99 neighborhoods
Proxy2025
Commercial Revitalization Districts vs neighborhoods
27 CRDs define where public tools for commercial revitalization exist. 72 of the city's 99 neighborhoods sit outside a CRD. Designation is a lever — where it exists, capital tends to follow.
City of Birmingham
Cross-cutting
166,487 jobs · $31.8B
Proxy2025
SMBs are the revenue base, not adjacent to it
99.9% of Birmingham's employer firms are SMBs. Nearly half are micro-enterprises (<10 people). Together they carry 166,487 jobs and $31.8B in annual revenue — the actual foundation of the metro economy.
COB Major Employers Directory V4
Tier 3 · Population context
The denominators — so people can size what they're seeing
~196,000
Population2024 estimate
City of Birmingham population
The city proper. Roughly 68% Black, ~29% white, ~5% Hispanic/Latino. Median age ~36. The denominator for every per-capita rate on this page.
Census Population Estimates · Vintage 2024
~674,000
Population2024 estimate
Jefferson County population
The county is the natural unit for most public data (Opportunity Atlas commuting zone, HMDA, ACS county tables). ~43% Black, ~51% white.
Census Population Estimates · Vintage 2024
~1.12M
Population2024 estimate
Birmingham–Hoover MSA population
The metro (7 counties) is the labor-market unit — the geography most economic mobility research uses. When Chetty says 'Birmingham,' this is usually what he means.
Census Population Estimates · Vintage 2024
~24% · ~35%
Population2020–2024 ACS
Poverty rate · overall & child poverty · City of Birmingham
About 1 in 4 Birmingham residents, and more than 1 in 3 children, live below the federal poverty line. Alabama child poverty statewide is ~22%, U.S. ~16%. This is the size of the population any mobility strategy is actually trying to move.
ACS 5-Year · S1701
Sources
Public datasets and partner reports. Local figures marked "verify" should be pulled directly for the summit deck rather than cited from this page. Under-sampling of Black-owned firms in federal surveys is documented — the BBC 2025 (reached one-by-one) sits alongside federal series for that reason.
