Fort Wayne.

• Author: Stafford, John
• Position: Economic conditions

Last year's Outlook edition suggested that the Fort Wayne area economy was experiencing a "steady but gradual rebound" from the recession that occurred in the early years of this decade. The job creation numbers for the last twelve months appear to support that assessment. Indeed, 2006 is looking very much like 2005--good but not great news for northeast Indiana. It has become clear that it will take sustained job creation over several years to fully replace the number and quality of jobs lost between 2000 and 2003. For purposes of this article, we will again use the seven county Fort Wayne-Auburn-Huntington Combined Statistical Area (CSA) to geographically define the "Fort Wayne area." The CSA includes the counties of Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, Wells, and Whitley.

Based on employer-reported data (the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages or QCEW), total employment in the area began to increase in the second quarter of 2004 and has increased each of the last eight quarters compared with the same quarter of the previous year. Between the first quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006, the area gained 2,203 total jobs, a growth rate of 0.8 percent. During the same time period, Indiana's total employment grew by a just slightly higher rate of 0.9 percent. Compared with employment in the first quarter of 2000, a time of peak employment for the Fort Wayne area, we are still down over 15,000 jobs. (1)

Figure 1 tracks the QCEW quarterly total "covered" employment with the comparable quarter from the previous year for both the Fort Wayne CSA and the state of Indiana. As the graph illustrates, the Fort Wayne area was more severely impacted by the 2000-2001 economic downturn than the state and also experienced relatively greater job loss in the 2003-2004 downturn than the state. Fort Wayne's current employment recovery appears to be on a nearly parallel path with the state of Indiana.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In the Fort Wayne area, nearly half of the net job gain between the first quarters of 2005 and 2006 occurred in the health care/social assistance sector with a gain of nearly 1,000 jobs. Conversely, the manufacturing sector lost nearly 1,400 jobs over the same time period. Area manufacturing employment had been on the increase in the second half of 2004 and the first half of 2005, but reversed course in the third quarter of 2005.

The other primary source of employment data, the monthly household survey (Local Area Unemployment...