Muncie forecast 2011.

• Author: Faulk, Dagney

Year two after the Borg Warner plant (the last of the large automobile-related factories) shuttered its doors, the Muncie metro area finds itself making progress redefining itself as a fledgling hub in the alternative energy industry. The city of Muncie went through a community planning process this year, and the resulting Muncie Action Plan identifies goals and actions to improve Muncie. There have been several job announcements over the past few months. And while local governments are still struggling with the ramifications of property tax caps, there seems to be a renewed sense of optimism for the coming year.

This article includes the most current data available on various measures of economic activity from public sources for the Muncie metropolitan area (Delaware County). The goal is to analyze changes over the past year. A summary of the labor market forecast for the Muncie area is included in the conclusion.

Labor Markets

The unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) for September 2010 is the lowest Delaware County has seen in the past year. However, the September 2010 rate (10.1 percent) is higher than the September 2009 rate of 9.7 percent and local unemployment has consistently been higher than that of the state. The good news is that the labor force has been slowly increasing since June and the number of unemployed workers has been decreasing at a faster rate, leading to the decrease in the unemployment rate (see Table 1). This is ideal and signifies that frustrated job seekers are coming back into the labor force; however, this value may mask underemployment where workers are working fewer hours than they would like (part-time instead of full-time) or have taken jobs that do not fully utilize their skills.

* TABLE 1: Labor Force and Unemployment for Delaware County, September 2009 to September 2010 Year Month Labor Force Unemployed Unemployment Rate September 54,449 5,283 9.7 October 54,386 5,538 10.2 2009 November 53,621 5,430 10.1 December 53,478 5,592 10.5 Annual 54,619 5,724 10.5 January 52,498 6,160 11.7 February 53,266 6,234 11.7 March 53,359 6,235 11.7 April 54,354 5,847 10.8 2010 May 54,687 5,866 10.7 June 53,035 6,356 12.0 July 53,085 6,155 11.6 August 53,401 5,896 11.0 September * 54,346 5,514 10.1 * September 2010 data are preliminary. Note: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Table 2 shows that nonfarm employment decreased by about 330 jobs (-0.7 percent) in 2010, which is a much...