Bloomington forecast 2023.

• Author: Rogers, Carol O.

Thanks to the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce and Bloomington Rotary Club, we kicked off our annual economic outlook tour in fine fettle this year, despite spreading news of a potential recession next year. Now, we are taking what we told the audience early in November and putting it on digital paper, focusing on the Bloomington metropolitan area. The Bloomington metropolitan area is so named because Bloomington is the largest city in the two counties that comprise the federally defined region, Monroe and Owen counties.

As the two maps below show, Monroe County is the job hub for Owen County, as well as Greene and Lawrence counties, which arguably should be part of the Bloomington metro definition. Commuting into a large city or county (of 50,000 or more in population) is a critical piece of the definition of a metropolitan statistical area. Nearly 17,000 people living in other counties commute into Monroe County for work, while fewer than 7,000 of the county's residents commute outside of Monroe County for their jobs (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Commuting into and out of Monroe County, tax year 2020 Into Monroe Out of State 1,028 Lawrence 3,684 Greene 2,775 Owen 2,199 Morgan 1,148 Out of Monroe Marion 1,110 Out of State 805 Lawrence 629 Martin 1,177 Owen 583 Source: STATS Indiana commuting profiles, based on Indiana IT-40 tax returns for tax year 2020 Note: Table made from pie chart. People

The Bloomington metro has been growing, albeit quite slowly, since 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau counts and estimates (Figure 2). On paper, some of that slow growth is likely due to the undercount of college students, who typically would have been counted in the 2020 decennial census but for two things: COVID-19 and the Trump administration.

Figure 2: Bloomington metro population 1950 61,843 1960 70,625 1970 97,384 1980 114,624 1990 126,259 2000 142,342 2010 159,530 2020 161,039 2021 161,321 Source: U.S. Census Bureau population counts (1950-2020) and estimates (2021) Note: Table made from bar graph. COVID-19 caused what some may call "the Great Pandemic Panic of 2020" (okay, I just thought that up), when students from colleges and universities throughout the United States left their campuses to take classes virtually from somewhere else just when census takers descended on their dormitories to count them. The Trump administration also determined that the 2020 Census would not get extra time (that many demographers, policymakers, public officials and...