While Indiana has a low unemployment rate and more than 32,000 open manufacturing jobs, the state has a notable worker gap, Andrew Berger, senior vice president of governmental affairs for the Indiana Manufacturers Association, said Friday.
Berger was among speakers for the Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce’s Groundhog Day Economic Forecast, which this year was online via Zoom presentation.
Indiana is among the top 10 states in manufacturing in the nation. Manufacturing had 535,326 employees in the second quarter of 2022, Berger said, with the average weekly wage at $1,515, about the same as professional, scientific and technical sectors.
Berger said while Indiana has a low unemployment rate, the state needs to attract workers back into the job market.
Indiana has an employment gap in its manufacturing sector, he said, with 136,243 job openings as of Dec. 1, 2022, however, only 102,894 Hoosiers were actively seeking employment.
“When you have 136,000 job openings but only 102,000 Hoosiers actively seeking employment, you’ve got an (employment) gap that is not going to be filled.
“There is not a new crop of people coming in to fill those openings,” he said, adding the state needs to find way to invest and grow its workforce.
“There were 91,900 Hoosiers who want a job but are not actively seeking a job while 32,000 jobs are available in manufacturing,” Berger said. “As the nation and our state ages, addressing or bumping up our (labor) participation rate is going to be more challenging. It is not an easy problem to solve.”
Reasons for the more than 90,000 Hoosiers not seeking a job vary, but child care is a major concern, Berger said.
“If it is a second income in a household, is the child care available and it is cost effective enough that it is able to be paid for with enough additional income to make it worth it for that family?”
Transportation is “another item and also education level,” he said. There are still Hoosiers not obtaining a high school degree, he said, which would allow them to earn a higher income “that would actually make it worth the work. So it is not a lack of desire, it is the personal math working for a lot of these people,” Berger said.
And of the 32,000 opening manufacturing jobs, many are entry level positions.
“The feedback I get, over and over, is that this is at the opening (entry) level (of manufacturing jobs) — where it is a constant churn of workers — that if you can get them in and get them to stay a month or six weeks, your chances of success of holding onto that worker are pretty good. But that is very difficult right now,” he said.
“All of your good workers during the pandemic got promoted and as retirements happen, due to the aging workforce, those people are moving up in your organizations too. It is back-filling those positions at the entry level that is the biggest challenge,” Berger said.
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