Muncie Forecast 2012.

• Author: Faulk, Dagney

The past year has been sluggish in east-central Indiana, but there are signs of increased economic activity. Delaware County's contribution to the 1-69 Alternative Energy Corridor is the Park One complex, now home to Brevini Wind, VAT Energies and Mursix. Earlier this year, Brevini Wind started production of it largest project to date: manufacturing gearboxes for Finland-based Winwind.1 Progress Rail Services opened a facility in a long vacant industrial building and in October displayed the first two locomotives produced by its new Muncie manufacturing facility. Presently, the number of workers is around 150 but is expected to increase.2 Local officials recently took a trip to Turkey, resulting in the announcement that Kermit USA plans to establish its U.S. headquarters in Muncie, creating 70 new jobs by 2016. (3)

This article includes the most current data available on various measures of economic activity from public sources for the Muncie metropolitan area (Delaware County) 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 for September 2011 made a healthy improvement from January 2011 decreasing from 10.6 percent to 9.3 percent. This is also lower than one year ago (September 2010) which had an unemployment rate of 10.0 percent. However, this is still higher than Indiana's rate of 8.5 percent (not seasonally adjusted). Similar to last year, the number of unemployed workers has decreased at a faster rate than the increase in the labor force. From January through September, the number of unemployed workers decreased by 9.6 percent, while the labor force increased by 3.0 percent. This led to the decrease in the unemployment rate (see Table 1).

Table 1: Labor Force and Unemployment for Delaware County, September 2010 to September 2011 Year Month Labor Force Unemployed Unemployment Rate 2010 September 54,730 5,476 10.0% October 54,291 5.348 9.9% November 54,002 5,631 10.4% December 53,504 5,345 10.0% Annual 54,114 6,074 11.2% 2011 January 52,614 5,563 10.6% February 52,423 5,225 10.0% March 52,917 4,953 9.4% April 52,968 4,572 8.6% May 53,710 4,854 9.0% June 51,953 5,272 10.1% July 52,413 5,241 10.0% August 52,797 5,233 9.9% September 54,184 5,030 9.3% Note: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Again in 2011, non-farm employment decreased. However, the decrease of 433 jobs was less than 2010's...