Indiana's economy is doing just fine, thank you.

• Author: Hicks, Michael
• Position: INDIANA INDICATORS

PAINTING INDIANA AS AN economic catastrophe makes for good sound bites, and might well have been true in the run-up to the 2004 election, but it is silly in today's Indiana, a rare point of prosperity in the Midwest.

Though the 2001 recession hit the state hard, since then employment is up 3.69 percent. Almost all that growth happened since 2004 when the State began to grow at about 1.5 percent per year.

Indiana's prosperity lies in three arenas. The first is fiscal sensibility Though ranked among the top in the nation for tax friendliness, the Governor led the split party legislature to a bi-partisan property tax reform plan of real significance.

The second is education. Indiana ranks very low in terms of educational achievement, but is a leader in educational improvement.

Third, Indiana enjoys remarkable transportation infrastructure, both public and private. In taking the bold step in public-private partnerships, Indiana is one of the few states to be actually extending the interstate highway system.

To be sure there are pockets of economic distress. I live in one. In these small and middle sized towns, it is hard to lure the sexy new industries of finance and R&D, but this too slowly changes.

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Indiana has seen property value growth--we're not the sub-prime capital of America, and truthfully, some of our biggest job losses have come in a shrinking state government.

Michael Hicks is director of the Bureau of Business Research at Ball State University.

LATEST PREVIOUS PERIOD PERIOD EMPLOYMENT (000) U.S. APR. 08 137,818.0 137,838.0 INDIANA APR. 08 2,988.6 2,967.9 MANUFACTURING EMPLOYMENT (000) U.S. APR. 08 13,596.0 13,642.0 INDIANA APR. 08 535.4 537.6 NON-MANUFACTURING...