Industrial sector in Northwest Indiana feeling no pain

BY ANDREA HOLECEK, Times of Northwest Indiana
holecek@nwitimes.com

Northwest Indiana's high-paying steel industry, and commercial and industrial union construction jobs, appear to be weathering the current economic downturn.

Steel prices are at all-time highs, supply can't meet demand, steel companies are profitable and work in the plants is keeping employees and contractors busy.

"The industrial sector is the best I've seen it in five years for this time of year," said Jim Strayer, business manager for the 25,000 members of the Northwest Indiana Building and Construction Trades Council.

"We have a lot of orders," he said. "BP (Whiting Refinery) is moving and it hasn't even started on the Canadian crude project. There have been a number of small repair outages in the mills so our turnover has been doing well. Hospital work is strong."

Bill Hasse, president of Calumet City-based Hasse Construction, and Dewey Pearman, executive director of Portage-based Construction Advancement Foundation, echoed that sentiment.

"For the past six months, industrial and commercial work has been up 20 percent over the past couple of years,' average, Hasse said. "In the Northwest Indiana market, prospects of work in the underground utility sector is average, but industrial-commercial is strong. It's ahead of what we anticipated, and we've not seen any slowdown."

Pearman said he has some concern about the possibility of softening in the commercial sector.

"There's optimism in industrial," he said. "The public works sector will continue to be strong, especially road projects."

Only residential construction, typically nonunion work, is weak.

But all three experts are concerned about the future.

"Our backlog is quite strong but there's concern over what could happen that we have no control over," Hasse said.