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What's
the hot ticket in economic development?
Any consultant can tell you.
Health care-related industries, or life sciences, are at the
top of many people's lists. Nanotechnology
is another up-and-coming industry.
And the resurgence in high tech stocks in recent months has
reminded us all that the potential for rapid growth in this hard-hit
area is still very large.
Those are only a few of the dozen or so new clusters of industries
that are expected to lead the economic parade in the coming years.
Indiana
is not
alone in coveting the job growth potential of these new, and for
some of us, unfamiliar, development opportunities.
Their very newness would seem, at first blush, to level the
playing field for all states and regions, like ours, who are looking
for a new economic spark.
But what resources and attributes do we bring to the table when we
bid against others for a piece of the action?
In geography, infrastructure, and even business climate, our
state's advantages and disadvantages are fairly well understood.
But when it comes to what is perhaps the single most
important factor influencing the course of our economic development
-- the labor force --
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too
many of us are unaware of where we stand.
There
was once a time when the image of
Indiana
, if we can be
said to have any image at all, was what might be called, typically
American. The selection of
Muncie
as the site of
the famous
Middletown
sociological
studies carried out in the 1920's underscored that notion.
But the shoe doesn't fit anymore, at least as far as the labor
force is concerned.
Outside of
Indianapolis
, we have retained an emphasis on
production-related activities in our state that was shed by the rest of
the country years ago. That
includes even states like
Illinois
and
Michigan
, in our own
back yard.
The data from the 2000 Census reveal this disparity in stark terms.
The Census classifies all workers into eight major occupational
categories. Two of those --
production, and transportation and material moving -- account for more
than 1 out of every 4 jobs in 47 of our state's 92 counties.
None of those counties are in central
Indiana
.
Contrast
that with
Michigan
, home of the
domestic automobile industry. Only
10 of Michigan
's 83 counties
can match the concentration of
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production-related
jobs found in half of
Indiana
's counties.
And four of those lie just to the north of our state's northern
border.
Illinois
has fourteen
production-oriented counties among its 102 counties.
In the
Midwest
, only
Ohio
comes anywhere
close to matching the
Indiana
labor force in
its concentration in production, with about a third of its counties
matching our level.
Upper Midwest
states like
Minnesota
can count
their production-oriented counties on one hand.
Central Indiana
is a notable exception.
The labor force in the counties surrounding
Indianapolis
sharply
differs from the rest of the state, and more closely resembles other
urban areas nationwide. Professional,
financial, and service-related occupations dominate the
Indianapolis
labor pool,
just as those jobs have crowded out traditional blue collar jobs even in
our
Midwest
neighbors.
Recruiting knowledge-oriented, technology-intensive companies to areas
of the state with a production-oriented labor force is quite a
challenge. But unless we
want to remain on the side of the road when the economy moves forward,
it’s something that we have to make happen.
Patrick M. Barkey
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