Nov 22, 2023

It's Turkey Day eve, for all who celebrate. It's possible your boss has checked out by now so you're working in a more relaxed (maybe even more productive) atmosphere. But it's more likely that you're packing several days of work into the next few hours so you can be gone till Monday.

With that in mind, we appreciate your time.

Ike Morgan

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The latest sign of the Huntsville area's boom is evident in household-income stats, reports Scott Turner for The Huntsville Lede.

According to an economic report from the Huntsville Area Association of Realtors and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in just five years Madison County's median household income has risen almost $18,000 a year. For 2023, median household income there is a robust $81,968. That's up from around $64,000 in 2019.

Over less than a decade, the area has added more than 35,000 advanced manufacturing jobs.

Clinical Associate Professor Brinda Mahalingam of the UAH Economics Department credits the low unemployment rate and labor shortages for pushing up salaries.

Every bit of that salary helps when you're deciding to buy a home. According to that quarterly economic report, at the end of September there were only 136 homes listed in the area that were $250,000 or less. That means most homes are simply out of reach for most working folks.

A Madison County couple pled guilty of defrauding the the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) out of $1.2 million, reports AL.com's William Thornton.

According to the plea agreement, the husband-and-wife team defrauded the Small Business Administration between February and June 2021.

Prosecutors said the two applied for a loan with bad information and used the money toward buying a home and taking a vacation. They could get up to 20 years in prison.

This week, high school football in Alabama will play the third round of its playoffs.

This time of year there are a handful of teams you can almost always count on seeing. But fans of variety should pay attention.

If you look at the all-time powerhouses, those at the top of the list of teams with the most playoff wins in Alabama high school football history, you'll count perennial state powers Hoover, T.R. Miller, UMS-Wright and Sweet Water at No. 1 through No. 4.

All four of those schools lost this past Friday, reports AL.com's Ben Thomas.

By the way, those playoff-wins totals go like this: Hoover 107, T.R. Miller 95, UMS 92 and Sweet Water 92.

That doesn't mean all the powers have fallen: Thompson and its four straight state titles are back in the Class 7A semis. Also still alive is Class 5A's Saraland, which has won 18 games in a row dating back to last season and has outscored opponents 649-161.

8th

For the fourth week in a row, that's where Alabama was ranked in the College Football Playoff Top 25 on Tuesday.

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