There are many imbalances in our economic environment. There are unemployed here and too few workers there. Part of these imbalances is because the skills available here are not needed here, and are caused by unemployment and job shortages. Alternatively, the workforce may be in short supply because the required skills are not available there.
Sometimes there are exactly the same places.
Often these imbalances are reconciled by people moving from here to there. Otherwise, just commute from here to there.
But often the imbalance isn’t about geography, it’s about skill sets that take time to adjust. The skills/experience imbalance requires training, time, and money.
Your employer may also cover relocation costs. In rare cases, you may pay for training or gaining experience. In most cases, employers expect workers or the government to cover the costs. Some employers share the cost of commuting by offering “free” parking or transportation.
How big are these imbalances in this state? Indiana employed 3,971,600 jobs and 3,282,400 residents in 2019. That’s 121 jobs for every 100 resident workers. (Again, the 2019 data is his pre-COVID and provides a more representative time than now.)
This apparent 700,000 imbalance can be partially explained by some people having more than one job and/or commuting to Indiana from elsewhere.
These are good guesses, but the real reason may be that the number of jobs reported by BEA/BLS et al. from employer records differ from those reported by the BLS/Census Household Survey. Two different sources collected in two different time periods from two different populations.
It’s monthly and nobody cares. The Monthly Employment Report and the Monthly Unemployment Rate suffer from the same problem, and we agree. why?
Because some numbers are better than no numbers at all. Your turkey thermometer may be off, but it gives you a good indication of how well your bird is doing.
Marion County had 161 jobs per 100 employed people in 2019. You can see it in the daily morning inflow and evening car outflow.
Newton County had 73 jobs for every 100 employed residents. Fulton and Porter counties were almost perfectly balanced, with 100 jobs for every 100 resident workers.
With 51 counties surpassing 100, DuBois (157) was just behind Marion numerically. 41 counties had numbers below 100, with Morgan (68) geographically right next to Marion.
We are a state where most counties depend on their neighbors for jobs and workers. Why would they compete with each other instead of working together?
