10 Worst Towns in Alabama. Don't Live in These Towns!

The ten Alabama towns with the hardest numbers in the Census Bureau's newest survey, the American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024, and its July 2025 population estimates: poverty, household income, home values, college degrees and how many people have left since the 2010 census. Every picture in this film is the town we name. "Worst" here is a ranking of numbers, never of the people who live in these towns. Each town also has a story that numbers miss, and we tell one for each. If one of these is your town, tell us in the comments what the numbers get wrong. HOW THE LIST WAS MADE 122 incorporated Alabama cities and towns with at least 2,000 people in the 2020 census and in the July 2025 estimate. Each is scored on five measures with equal weight (poverty rate, per capita income, median home value, share of adults with a bachelor's degree, population change since 2010). Estimates with a poverty margin of error too wide to trust were left out. So were towns where more than 15 % of the people counted live in group quarters such as a prison, because the survey averages income and education over everyone it counts (Clayton and Brent; see the chapter). In towns this small every survey figure carries a wide margin of error, so treat each number as close, never exact. CHAPTERS 0:00 Ten towns, one survey 1:03 #10 Fayette, Fayette County 3:14 #9 Bridgeport, Jackson County 5:10 #8 Aliceville, Pickens County 6:55 #7 LaFayette, Chambers County 8:40 #6 Brundidge, Pike County 10:43 #5 Prichard, Mobile County 13:14 #4 Evergreen, Conecuh County 14:50 #3 Eutaw, Greene County 16:52 #2 York, Sumter County 18:18 The two towns left off the list 19:01 #1 Union Springs, Bullock County 21:22 All ten SOURCES Census data: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year summary file (tables B01003, B17001, B19013, B19301, B25077, B15003, B26001); City and Town Population Totals, Vintage 2025 and 2010-2020. Town history and facts: Encyclopedia of Alabama; National Register of Historic Places nominations; Historic American Engineering Record (Library of Congress); Alabama Department of Labor WARN notices; Alabama Department of Commerce; ADECA; ADEM; Alabama Department of Corrections; U.S. EPA; city and county websites; and reporting by WSFA, WBRC, WTVM, WTOK, WKRG, FOX10, NBC 15, WAAY, the Tuscaloosa Thread and The New York Times. Every number in the narration was checked against a saved copy of its source before the voice was recorded. PHOTO CREDITS (Creative Commons) Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0: Emmett Tullos from Jackson AL, United States Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0: formulanone from Huntsville, United States Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0: Bruce Berger Mapillary, CC BY-SA 4.0: allen, jackdripper, caboosey VIDEO CREDITS Fayette Alabama 1940 Full Transfer, Internet Archive (Public Domain Mark) : Mapillary contributors allen, caboosey, jackdripper, sherbets (CC BY-SA 4.0). Aerial photographs: USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (public domain). Maps: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER boundaries. All other photographs are public domain (Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, U.S. government).