RVs dominate Elkhart County's GDP, leading to calls for diversification

Here are more numbers that prove it: The production subcategory that includes RVs — formally dubbed motor vehicles, bodies and trailers and parts manufacturing — accounted for $3.33 billion of Elkhart County’s $11.45 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012.

That’s 29.1 percent of the county total.

And it’s heads and shoulders above the next biggest subcategory, chemical products, which accounted for $803 million in production, 7 percent of the Elkhart County total.

The figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and they’re from 2012, the last year for which a detailed breakdown is available. They help explain why many leaders here have long been calling for economic diversification beyond RVs, and they figure into the next installment of our Five Years Later series, coming later this month.