John Collins, foreground, a student taking a weekly class at Southern Indiana Works in New Albany, gets help with a program from Code Louisville mentor Daniel Roberts. Staff photo by Daniel Suddeath
SOUTHERN INDIANA — Daniel Roberts admitted it was a tongue-in-cheek analogy, though the coding mentor emphasized that the ever expanding digital universe will always require human direction.
“No job is completely safe from automation, but when the robot overlords take over, somebody has to program those overlords,” said Roberts, who instructs a small group of students in New Albany once a week through the Code Louisville program.
The joint effort between Kentuckiana Works and Southern Indiana Works provides a 12-week course in which students learn software development language. Many of the pupils have little-to-no experience in coding before registering for the classes, and they’re drawn to the program with the hopes of launching a new career.
“I always wanted to learn how to do it, but I just always assumed when I was younger that it was one of those things that was too hard and I should get into something else,” said Clark County resident Robert Barhan, as he studied alongside Roberts.
Economists, elected officials and economic development leaders have pushed for more tech-related jobs in Indiana, and a study released this year serves as further evidence for the approach.
A Brookings Institution study, titled “State of renewal: Charting a new course for Indiana’s economic growth and inclusion,” suggests a mixed bag for the state’s economic future.
While the report finds the state has performed well in terms of pandemic job recovery, it suggests Indiana faces many challenges ahead.
Slow wage growth, lack of advanced industry competitiveness, and under investment in technology were among the issues the Brookings Institute highlighted as hurdles for the state’s economy and labor force moving forward.
The Brookings study was released in February. The report launched through a 2019 deal with the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, which invited Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program to "provide a data-grounded economic assessment and actionable set of recommendations to inform the state's economic strategy at an important time."
And to many, the report’s findings were hardly a surprise.
“Basically wage growth has been slow in Indiana relative to other states, and again, these are kind of longer-term trends, more than just from the pandemic,” said Kyle Anderson, an economist at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis.
The pay issues are largely tied to educational attainment levels of Hoosier workers compared to peer states, he said.
“We’re not getting as many high-skilled jobs and I think we have some trouble attracting a lot of businesses in the technology sector and related areas,” Anderson said.
A changing workforce
Manufacturing has long been Indiana’s employment base, but automation and changing market dynamics are ushering in large-scale transitions in the sector.
Historically, manufacturing provided lots of middle-class jobs. The sector is shifting, due in large part to technological advances, to offer fewer positions with more skill involved.
“The 18-to-24-year-olds, they need more skills now to have a career than they ever have,” Anderson said.
Tony Waterson, executive director of Southern Indiana Works, said the Brookings study reinforced many of the workforce development strategies instilled by the organization.
Specifically, Waterson said Indiana workforce development entities are acknowledging the demand for training digital and tech-savvy laborers who will be prepared for numerous jobs across a wide spectrum of sectors.
“We need to make sure our talent pipeline is prepared for that new investment,” he said.
Before a company decides on a location, it must be ensured that an adequate workforce exists to support its operations.
Anderson credited Gov. Eric Holcomb and the state for advancing Pre-K programs, but he added such investments can take a long time to pay dividends.
Waterson and Anderson agreed that educating the workforce isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
“It’s not just every 18-year-old needs to go to IU or Purdue or Ball State,” Anderson said. “It’s a much broader strategy than that.”
Vocational training, community colleges and adult education all are critical components of developing a skilled and attractive workforce, they said.
Wage issues
The Brookings study showed Indiana underperformed national average earnings gains from 2007 to 2019. The state average earnings grew at 0.3%, half of the national average of 0.6% over that span.
The average median earnings per worker reached $34,300 in Indiana, while the amount was $36,600 nationwide.
“Only in the last pre-pandemic years did Indiana workers’ earnings begin to grow in a sustained way, albeit at a slower pace than that of its peers,” researchers state in the study.
More disturbing, the report finds, is that Indiana’s real median wage growth since 2000 ranks 46th among states.
Wages directly correlate to employment during the pandemic. According to the study, high- and medium-wage earners had seen nearly full employment recovery by October 2020, while low-wage laborers were experiencing a 17% decline in employment compared to mid-January 2020.
Barriers to employment
While education is a common theme when it comes to workforce development and employment, the report and economic officials said there are other factors that can depress job and career growth.
Southern Indiana is getting closer to where it was at the end of 2019 in terms of total employment, but that means the issues that existed pre-COVID are again at play, Waterson said.
“Employers still need workers. They still need workers that are prepared to enter the workforce,” he said. “We’re still facing the same barriers to employment of individuals. Transportation and child care are obviously the two biggest, especially for entry-level employees.”
And those are the kinds of issues that can’t be solved only by the government or an employer, Waterson said.
“It takes a holistic approach to be able to solve those problems and come up with solutions,” he said. “It needs to be a community coming together to come up with solutions.”
The Brookings study suggests enacting a refundable, quarterly child care tax credit as a short-term approach to dealing with the issue. The report proposes several long-term initiatives to address the costs and quality of child care.
Good jobs
The warehouse where John Collins worked shut down when the pandemic started.
The Clark County resident didn’t feel like he was building a career with the position, but the pause in employment gave him an opportunity to consider another path.
He connected with the Code Louisville program, and despite having little knowledge of the skills needed to become a coder, Collins has found a new calling.
“You can basically do anything with this stuff,” Collins said as he motioned the mouse over a line of codes on a computer screen inside the New Albany office. “It’s almost like learning magic with Harry Potter.”
Collins said he doesn’t just want a job, but rather a career.
That’s why adult education, training and other efforts are important for Indiana’s economy and labor force, Waterson said. While obviously having a low unemployment rate is desirable, there’s more to the situation than just having a job.
Waterson said regional economic development leaders have set goals for increasing the number of “good jobs” in Southern Indiana. Those jobs are defined as paying a locally-adjusted amount of $40,700 annually along with employer-sponsored health insurance.
While the Brookings study said Indiana’s stock of good jobs compares favorably to most states, only 42% of the Hoosier workforce held such a position between 2014 and 2018.
“That means that roughly 58% of Hoosier workers — nearly three out of five — lacked a good job then,” researchers stated in the report.
One barrier to realizing more good jobs is insufficient digital investment, which hampers advanced-industry competitiveness, the study concluded.
The report suggests Indiana should focus on renewal in its recovery efforts, and can do so by “taking action to accelerate technology adoption, facilitate faster industry and worker adaptation, and promote economic inclusion.”
It also calls for a “Choice Employers” designation for Indiana companies that support workers as they increase their skills and hopefully, their wages. The state could support the initiative by providing training grants, prioritizing support from state workforce development boards, and providing matching funds for businesses that invest in child care and worker transportation.
Broadband, skilled labor and retaining assets
Floyd County Commissioner John Schellenberger has long been an avid supporter of expanding broadband access in rural areas.
The county partnered with a local provider last year through a state grant to begin expanding broadband to unserved households and businesses in the Southern Indiana county. He concurred with the Brookings study findings that broadband expansion is important to the state’s future economic vitality.
Funding can be an issue, though, as was the case in Floyd County. Schellenberger said future expansions will likely hinge on the availability of state funding.
“Counties are strapped with balancing their budgets,” he said. “If the state can provide funding and seed money to help them get started, it’s going to be key.”
Floyd County is on pace to open its first-ever certified technology park this year with the Novaparke Innovation and Technology Campus.
Officials have estimated that the 60-acre park in Edwardsville could generate more than 400 high-paying jobs. Schellenberger said certified tech parks are the future for Indiana if the state wants to increase its amount of good jobs, and also to retain its brightest minds.
“We have a lot of young kids that go off for college and they get their degrees and they’ll go elsewhere for employment,” he said. “With good STEM jobs at Novaparke, we can keep our talent in Floyd County.”
There’s more to economic development than job training and placement, Waterson said. It incorporates everything from quality-of-life amenities to Main Street activity, especially when it comes to attracting and retaining workers in high-skilled professions, he said.
Lawmakers play an important role by acknowledging that there are multiple layers to business recruitment, Anderson said. ?“When I think of what Indiana has done, its economic strategy in the past has been focused on kind of low taxes, low regulation. But a lot of the businesses that are looking to potentially relocate here aren’t just looking for those sorts of things. What they want is infrastructure. What they want is an educated workforce,” he said.
“I think we need to focus more on what’s going to make the workforces of tomorrow and the businesses of tomorrow want to actively come here.”
Not all bad news
While there are issues to rectify, Anderson said he tends to be optimistic, especially when considering the near future.
“I do think that manufacturing is going to remain an important sector in Indiana’s economy for years to come,” he said.
He predicted the next year will bring more job creation and lower unemployment as pandemic restrictions are eased.
“I think there’s going to be a bit of a boom over the next 12 months,” Anderson said.
Workers like Roberts are encouraged about what the future could bring.
He earned a computer science degree, but found it difficult getting into the IT field once the economy crashed after he graduated in 2008.
Roberts completed coding classes in 2018, and said he enjoys teaching others the language. Having knowledge in tech and coding serves as a solid foundation for his future.
“It boils down to the fact that it’s everywhere, and you’re not going to stop that,” Roberts said.
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