Economy

While lack of transportation is a major employment barrier in Alabama, few people take public transit to work. That dynamic is even more pronounced in rural areas.

A sign welcoming drivers to Tallassee, Alabama, calls the town a “Treasure on the Tallapoosa.” Members of a coalition of community, advocacy and labor organizations that held a press conference there recently would say they’re trying to keep it that way.

More than 50 people on supervised release from Alabama’s prison system sat in folding chairs inside the Montgomery Day Reporting Center earlier this year. Speakers briefly addressed them, telling what to expect from the resource and job fair they were about to visit.

At Yo’ Mama’s restaurant in downtown Birmingham, Rosie and Jeffrey make their co-workers’ lives easier.

Sitting in a cubicle inside the Birmingham Career Center, employment security representative Chancellor Maryland asked Margaret Jenkins to confirm her most recent employers: Walmart, Dollar Tree, Jack’s, Bojangles and Arby’s.“The reason why it’s so much is, many times, I’ve been working two jobs at one time, trying to get myself back up, while I could,” Jenkins said.She said she came to the center, one of 56 across Alabama run by the state’s Workforce Department, because she wants to transition to a different type of work.“I’m 48, and I want a new career, training and education all at the same time.”

Pop-up banners and tables strewn with logo-covered materials lined the walls of a large room during a late-summer hiring event at Lawson State Community College in Bessemer. Employers and trade-union representatives stood ready to recruit job seekers.

Kim Hood, a regular patron of Beautiful Rainbow Café, describes the eatery inside Gadsden Public Library as “a big hug with wonderful food.”

Most people are familiar with the 1963 March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at that event. Fewer know the full name of the gathering – the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – or that the event focused on economic as well as civil rights.Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers of America, gave one of the main speeches.