Ted Booker and Caleb Bauer, South Bend Tribune
NEW CARLISLE —Out in the rural New Carlisle area, St. Joseph County is trying to catch “big fish.”
County leaders are spending millions of dollars and acquiring hundreds of acres of farmland with the hope of attracting a large-scale manufacturing company.
They recently came up short with a Toyota-Mazda plant they’d hoped to land. It could have been quite the fish — 4,000 jobs were at stake.
But the automakers said they were worried that Indiana’s low unemployment rate could make it hard to find workers, and that they didn’t want a new plant in Indiana to poach workers from other Toyota plants in the state.
The miss, and the explanation from the companies, raises a question: Is chasing after large industrial companies, with hopes of landing amajor manufacturing hub, the county’s best strategy?
For the last several years, for example, business and government leaders have talked about diversifying the local economy, investing in efforts to spark high-tech companies and not relying so much on a heavy manufacturing base already driven by auto, RV and related jobs.
Ball State University economist Michael Hicks said the county’s strategy could be “outdated” and “risky.”
The likelihood of attracting big job-producing manufacturers is low across the country, Hicks said, because automated technology continues to replace such jobs. Since 1970, the U.S has had a net loss of more than 6 million manufacturing jobs.
“This is almost a return to 1970s economic development strategy. We’re at a place where the economy is going to have far fewer plant relocations in the coming years,” said Hicks, who called the county’s strategy “smokestack chasing.”