Alabama: Slow Growth In The Deep South

Going into today’s voting, Alabama is on track to be the Deep South’s biggest carry for Donald Trump, with a possibility that he takes down all 29 of the state’s delegates. (If he takes down more than 50 percent of the vote, from there the electoral math in Alabama gets incredibly complex.)

Alabama is something of an outlier state in the region it calls home. Along with its neighbor to the the west in Mississippi, it lacks a major city to call its own and its growth picture for Store front business reflects that.

By The Store Front Numbers

In Alabama, growth through the second quarter of 2015 trailed both the country at large and the South region of the country.

The state’s growth clocked in at 1.5 percent, which compares unfavorably with the larger territories covered, both up more than 3 percent year over year. The rebound into positive showings off the base year of 2007 has been fairly recent — a phenomenon that did not start in the state overall until 2012 and which has hovered just over the 100 level for some time.

Within the South at large, it has been wages that drove the overall positive movement in the region, with 4.7 percent growth across that metric — a force that was presumably less robust in this state.