The Southeast, side by side
Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Mississippi compete for many of the same plants. Pick a measure and a starting year to compare them, with the U.S. as a benchmark.
Drill down: state, metro area, county
Pick a state, then one of its metro areas, then a county, or click the map. The map zooms to your pick, and its line is added to the chart below.
How the five states compare
Over time
Industry by industry
Before and after CHIPS and the IRA
Growth per year, so periods of different length compare fairly. Every state also has its own incentive programs, and the timing of a law alone doesn't show that it caused a change. See the Alabama page for Alabama's laws.
What each category includes
Every manufacturing industry BLS tracks sits in exactly one category and one industry group, so together they add up to all of manufacturing. The small numbers are NAICS industry codes, the federal system BLS uses to classify businesses.
Data sources
- BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: jobs, establishments (plants and shops) and pay by county, state and industry, private sector, annual averages and the latest quarter.
- BLS Consumer Price Index: used to put pay in today's dollars.
- Census Bureau County Business Patterns: plants by number of employees.
- Census Bureau metro area definitions (July 2023).
- us-atlas: county and state outlines from the Census Bureau.