By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Herald Bulletin
Buckle your seat belts and hold tight to your wallets — Anderson may lose 400 to 600 more jobs in 2006.
“Anderson continues to struggle,” said Ball State economist Patrick Barkey. “High-wage manufacturing jobs are very threatened.”
The U.S. economy will likely hold steady in 2006, Barkey and four other economists said in a Chamber of Commerce panel discussion at the Anderson Country Club this week, but the state and local pictures are grimmer.
The region’s low wages are luring jobs to the state, but that salvation may turn out to be a curse. Hoosier workers make only 91 percent, on average, of what the rest of the country earns.
“Is that what we really want to be known for?” retired economist and newspaper columnist Morton Marcus said. “Wouldn’t it be better to encourage kids to leave?”
Some local business people disagreed.
“There is a price to pay for high wage. Some other states have a higher cost of living,” said Brenda Murr, vice president of Mermaid Pool, Spa and Patio. “If we’re going to be a low-wage state, we just have to be able to interpret that to people that may be looking at our state.”
Even though the high-wage manufacturing jobs that have supported the area are melting away, Indiana isn’t the only state to suffer.
“Indiana is doing well by Midwest standards,” Barkey said. “We’re doing much better than Ohio, Michigan, even Illinois.”
But according to him, Anderson (and Muncie, for that matter) are watching that trend from the outside.
From 1994 to 2004, the total wage bill, meaning the total amount workers are paid, went up 70 percent nationwide and 50 percent in Indiana. In Anderson, that number remained flat.
But wages, said John May, vice president at Madison Community Bank, is not the only measure of a community.
“People underestimate the quality of life we enjoy,” he said. “I guess I kind of am something of a Pollyanna when it comes to pride. We have so much to be thankful for, and we tend to overlook those benefits and take them for granted.”
But business here, he said, still needs to change with the times and work to attract new growth.
“We can’t rely upon our traditional marketing, just sit back and wait for people to come in,” he said. “We’ve got to go out and be more proactive.”
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