Milken: Huntsville's economy stays hot in cooling market
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
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.