Last year new and expanding industries announced plans to create more than 20,000 jobs with investments topping $5.4 billion in Alabama.
But those numbers did not include a single new job or investment in almost a dozen of Alabama's 67 counties.
Three-quarters of that investment and two-thirds of the jobs are slated for the state's 15 urban counties, defined as those with cities that have populations of 25,000 people or more, al.com reported. The rest of the new jobs was split among 41 rural counties and the 11 that ended up empty-handed are also all considered rural.
Despite the rapid growth of the auto industry over the past two decades, and now with the burgeoning aerospace sector, some parts of the state are simply being left behind.
