Randall Woodfin took over as Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama in 2017 when he was 36 years old. He’s had to address urban blight, gun violence, and the challenges affecting many cities in the United States and especially the South: food deserts, racial strife, the ongoing public health response to COVID-19 and job growth.

On the latter, Woodfin and his administration have taken an active role in trying new ideas to promote jobs and economic activity. In a sit-down interview with Newsweek, he shared the trajectory of Birmingham going back to its founding in 1871, when it emerged as a booming steel town and became known as the “Magic City” for its rapid growth in such a short time.

“Like many Rust Belt cities and industrial southern cities, there was an economic identity crisis, and we had to make a pivot. For us, that pivot in the late 1970s and 80s turned into health care, other forms of manufacturing, as well as financial services,” Woodfin said.

He notes that the city found a way to evolve, but the world is changing once again. Health care and financial services have had their own shocks over the last few decades, including the recent pandemic and the less recent, late-aughts stock market crash.

“Birmingham finds itself in the midst of its third economic identity,” the mayor, a Birmingham native, Morehouse political science and Samford law graduate, said.

Woodfin was an assistant city attorney and a school board member before becoming mayor. He said he sees health care, health-tech, biotech, and continued manufacturing as keys to the city’s future success, and notes that its location in the center of the state and southeast offers important regional and local proximity.

“The third iteration can’t only be about attracting talent, it has to be about making investments, yielding tangible results for the people who live within your city,” Woodfin said.

Woodfin renamed the Office of Economic Development to the Office of Innovation and Economic Opportunity. This office is meeting with local businesses on the broader mission of improving the city’s job prospects, urban experience and schools.

“Words matter,” he said. “Following that lane, it’s been very simple for us to do a couple things. Use my convening power, use my platform as mayor, and then use my pulpit to convene everyone in the city who will touch economic development. Hold yourself out as an economic development organization. I need you in the room, need you at the table.”

Woodfin shared that education has been a key pillar of his workforce and economic development approach.

“Whatever that is, whatever that looks like, that pipeline is cradle to career,” he said. “You can’t detach economic development from workforce development, and you can’t detach workforce development from education either. I started with education first.”

One of the first major programs installed was Birmingham Promise, which provides city public high school graduates with two- and four-year college scholarships at in-state schools. Since its inception in 2020, over 1600 students have graduated college through the program, which is funded in part through private partnerships.

Beyond that, Birmingham Promise is expanding opportunities for apprenticeships, work-based learning and internships for the same students. In high school or college, they can gain credit by working part-time jobs. He’s also pardoned thousands of residents with previous marijuana-related criminal records.

“The key words are exposure and opportunity,” Woodfin said. “The whole idea is for intentional design creating a whole workforce pipeline. This is not charity…it’s a workforce design strategy that we’ve implemented.”

Woodfin also enacted a workforce tax abatement, of sorts, to help subsidize local employers’ ability to pay a living wage, a mark notably higher than the federal or state minimum wage. He’s also had to make an effort to attract recent college graduates, many of whom are attracted to bigger cities like Nashville, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, or Atlanta, Georgia, he said.

“Young people really want balance. They want to know what is there for me to do in the city. So attached to this whole opportunity piece is quality of life,” Woodfin said. “I put our city up against any city as it relates to affordability of housing.”

He also touted the city’s outdoor scene and proximity to amenities.

“You get the quality of life with good weather, the conversation of [being] a foodie town, to hike and bike and be [driving distance] from the mountains or the beach,” Woodfin said.

These efforts, along with the push around quality of life, have led to successful partnerships with companies like Shipt, a startup grocery delivery service, and Landing, a facilities management software company that moved from San Francisco in 2024. The J.M Smucker Co. has a 700-person manufacturing facility in the suburbs and U.S. Steel maintains a presence 10 miles outside of Birmingham.

The pandemic and proliferation of remote work have led to migration out of the major U.S. cities where jobs and industries were previously concentrated. It has led to opportunities for many of the country’s mid-sized cities. Some, like Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Topeka, Kansas, have established successful incentive programs for remote workers. Others are growing because jobs and opportunities began to spread out and people like being near mountains, beaches, parks and houses they can reasonably afford.

“I think there’s a new south. This new South exists beyond Atlanta and Nashville. I think it includes Baton Rouge, Birmingham, and Chattanooga,” Woodfin said.

He reiterated the need to work with employers through public-private partnerships to deliver workers the training they want. In turn, companies can offer employment and pathways to comfortable lifestyles.

“A lot of elected officials feel they have to choose between labor and unions and corporate or local business,” he said. “I believe you have to work with both if you want to yield tangible results for the people you represent.”