Milken: Huntsville's economy stays hot in cooling market
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Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano speaks at the opening of L3Harris' new Huntsville facility in August 2025. Photo: Derek Lacey/Axios
Huntsville's economy is among the best in the country, per the Milken Institute's annual Best-Performing Cities ranking released today.
Why it matters: The analysis from the nonpartisan think tank shows that Huntsville's economy, buoyed by high-tech defense and aerospace contracts, is gaining ground in a largely cooling economy.
Driving the news: Huntsville landed at No. 2 among large cities in the 2026 ranking, which says it has "consistently enjoyed one of the fastest-growing job markets in the country" and "has firmly established itself as a major defense and aerospace hub."
- The Huntsville metro area is up from No. 4 in 2025 and No. 16 in 2024.
What they're saying: "Huntsville is doing incredibly well, and I think in a really good position going forward," Brock Smith, director of research for Milken, told Axios Huntsville.
- That's thanks to long-term government contracts and government funding initiatives for satellite and missile defense, as well as the Space Command move.
- The Rocket City is bucking national trends in affordability, he said, with housing staying affordable even as the city grows rapidly, and with higher growth in higher-wage jobs while other metros see more growth in lower-wage jobs.
Zoom in: Manufacturing stands out as a major strength for Huntsville, with the sector growing 37.6% from 2019 to 2024 — far outpacing the national growth rate of 2.7% over the same period.
- But year-over-year growth in Huntsville's high-tech sector ranks in the bottom quarter of large cities, down 128 spots from last year, "due to a drop in GDP in some of the city's key high-tech industries … despite the continued job expansion of Huntsville's aerospace industry."
Caveat: "These one-year growth categories can be pretty volatile," Smith said. "It might bounce back or it might be the start of a trend. It's hard to say."
How it works: The ranking, published annually since 1999, "reflects cities' effectiveness at leveraging their resources to promote economic growth" and provide services to its residents.
- Smith said the rankings evaluate 13 metrics, including job growth, GDP growth, access to economic opportunity and affordability.
Case in point: "Huntsville has excelled in providing affordable housing," the report says, ranking third nationwide among large cities.
- That's measured by the percentage of residents considered resilient, spending less than 30% of their income on housing expenses, and how cities performed in that metric in the five to 10 years following the recession.
- "It's not just high, but nearly the best," Smith said of Huntsville's affordability ranking. "It's very unusual. If you look at the other Tier 1 cities, it's often the thing they're bad at, but (for) Huntsville, it's one of the things it's best at."
Yes, but: Broadband access ranks near the bottom nationwide, ranking 94th among large cities.
- The ranking also uses Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs data, so recent announcements about Eli Lilly and expansions for Blue Origin and SPX were not included in the analysis.
