Photo by Jon Anderson
Greg Reed, secretary of the Alabama Department of Workforce, speaks to the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce at Mountaintop Community Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, on Tuesday, March 10, 2026.
Alabama has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at 2.7%, but the state must continue to grow its workforce to keep the economy strong and moving in a positive direction, the director of the Alabama Department of Workforce told the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.
Eighty percent of the people in Alabama ages 16 to 65 are working, which is a strong number, but the overall workforce participation rate of 58% is not positive, Director Greg Reed told the chamber crowd gathered at Mountaintop Community Church for lunch.
And what’s hard to hear and keeps him up at night is that only 71% of Alabamians ages 20 to 29 are working, Reed said.
“What is the 29% doing?,” he said. “They’re not in college. They’re not working. They’re not paying taxes. I can’t find them anywhere on the grid, except they have a Social Security number. Where are they? It’s our job to find them, identify them, hold onto to them and let them know – we’ve got a great opportunity for you.”
The state is making some progress and taking steps to improve those numbers, Reed said.
For the first time in seven years, Alabama’s workforce participation rates increased in 2025, Reed said. It was by 4/10 of 1%, but that added 24,000 new trained workers for Alabama’s economy, he said.
One of the biggest things the state has done was to create a new state agency that combined the Alabama Department of Labor with the workforce development divisions of the Alabama Department of Commerce, the Alabama Industrial Development Training program and abandoned mine and mine safety programs, Reed said. The new agency — the Alabama Department of Workforce, which Reed was tapped to lead a year ago — has more than 800 employees, he said.
The goal was to unify workforce development efforts, follow the data and make wise decisions based on numbers, Reed said. A new state workforce board and new regional workforce boards were created as advisory boards, bringing together the brightest business leaders across the state, he said.
Education and training is a key component of the new agency’s efforts, Reed said.
Most of the future workforce is still in school, so one goal of his agency is to help people start identifying potential career paths earlier in life and setting them up in apprenticeship programs. His agency has developed a youth apprenticeship program for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds.
He got some pushback from that because of child labor laws but put lawyers and inspectors in a room together and told them to figure out a way to make it work, and they did, he said. There are now nine youth apprenticeship programs in Alabama, with Mercedes-Benz being the first one that was created, he said.
Those students, once they turn 18 and graduate high school with experience as an apprentice and credentials earned through a dual enrollment scholarship at a two-year college, are highly marketable in the job market, Reed said. “Who’s not going to want to hire that kid?”
The Alabama Office of Apprenticeships, which is part of his agency, now has a total of 517 companies with apprenticeship programs to help people of all ages build new skills for jobs that are in demand, and the state is subsidizing programs for nearly 5,000 apprentices across the state, he said.
That’s important because some of these young workers in their 20s already have car payments and kids, and they can’t afford to quit working to further their education, Reed said. These apprenticeship programs make it possible for them to improve their skills and follow their dreams, he said.
There are 500,000 people who live in Alabama who started a college education but never finished, Reed said. Some of those have gone on to be highly successful, but others likely could benefit from being able to go back to college and finish their degrees or get certified in their fields, he said. If the state could identify and help just 10% of those people to do that, it would be a big benefit for them and for the business community, which gains better trained workers, he said. The state has scholarship opportunities to accomplish that, he said.
Reed also serves as chairman of the Alabama Veterans Resource Center, a new center that just opened in Montgomery aimed at helping veterans get job opportunities. Companies are eager to hire veterans because of the discipline and work ethic they learned in the military, and this center wants to help make those connections, he said.
The Alabama Department of Workforce also is working Eric Mackey, the state education superintendent, to provide more resources for career tech education in schools, and more information will be coming out on that in the future, Reed said.
Alabama has been making progress on other fronts to boost the state’s economy, he said. The Alabama Jobs Act, which Reed said he sponsored seven to eight years ago as a state senator, provided new tax rebate opportunities for companies. The Rebuild Alabama program has provided $3 billion in road and bridge improvements, and the state has been making huge gains to expand broadband internet access, Reed said.
“We’re the envy of America in this category,” he said. “Alabama’s gone from 47th to 21st in states in our nation with access to the internet, much of that in rural communities in Alabama.”
With state and federal investment dollars for broadband internet totaling $2.7 billion, Alabama will be ranked in the teens within a year, he said.
“Other states, especially smaller states, … are not even remotely close to us,” Reed said. “It makes a big difference.”
And Alabama is making strides with an Innovate Alabama plan to prepare the state for the knowledge-based industry of artificial intelligence, Reed said. “It’s coming, and we better embrace it, or we’re going to be left behind. These opportunities are going to be very important.”
The state also has developed a new career pathways diploma and set up job care credits and housing credits to boost workforce efforts, Reed said.
“Alabama’s put herself in a pretty good place,” he said. “Workforce is the bridge that connects educational benchmarks and economic development aspirations. Education, business, industry, manufacturers, government all have to be working together on the workforce theme for us to accomplish what our goals are.”
If Alabama can’t guarantee businesses looking for a place to set up shop that it will have the workforce they need, “the folks that are making those decisions may go to Mississippi or Michigan or North Carolina or Beijing,” Reed said. “We want Alabama’s workers to be the best trained and most well-educated in America and there be more of them tomorrow than there is today. If we can accomplish that, we’re going to be in a great place in Alabama.”
