The Birmingham-Hoover metro is currently tied with Miami, FL for the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. among metro areas with over one million residents according to a study recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The Birmingham-Hoover metro area’s unemployment rate was 2.2% in Feb. of this year. When compared with the other 51 metropolitan areas that had a 2010 Census population of over 1 million, the metro only tied with Miami, FL for the lowest percentage.

This is a sign that the metro’s economy is bouncing back post-COVID according to Christopher Burks, founder of Birmingham-based public policy consulting firm Urban Analysis.

Out of Birmingham-Hoover’s labor force of just over 564,000 people, only around 12,000 of these people were unemployed as of Feb. 2023 according to the BLS study.

“As the US has begun to recover from the pandemic, the unemployment rate for the nation has been declining since 2021,” said Burks.