Muncie forecast 2022.

• Author: Faulk, Dagney

The COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact the local economy. The number of new COVID-19 cases decreased dramatically during the spring and summer as vaccines became widely available, only to spike again late summer and into the fall as the delta variant gained a foothold in the region. At the beginning of November 2021, when this article was written, over 15,000 people in the county had tested positive (out of more than 231,000 tests administered) and 268 people had died of the COVID-19 virus since the beginning of the pandemic. (1) For comparison, at the beginning of November 2020, just over 3,400 people in the county had tested positive (out of almost 28,500 people tested) and 85 had died of COVID-19.

Many of the changes in the data discussed in this article can be tied to economic forces unleashed by the pandemic and the related government responses. The pandemic interrupted small gains that had been made in previous years as the Muncie metro recovered from the Great Recession and various structural changes to the local economy related to dramatic decreases in manufacturing employment over the past several decades. Other trends, such as the decline in retail employment, continue even as the economy recovers.

Highlights from 2021's business news included new businesses moving into several vacant sites around Muncie. Right Drive (a company that sells pre-owned vehicles) is scheduled to open at the former Hubler Ford lot, and North Central Industries (a local company that imports fireworks) is rehabbing a former tool and die facility near downtown into a warehouse and distribution facility. (2) A Gillman Home Center store (hardware and building materials) is planned at the southside site of the recently demolished Red Roof Inn. (3) A large, multifamily housing development is planned for a former Marsh supermarket site in southeast Muncie. (4) In addition, the CanPack Group (a manufacturer of aluminum beverage cans) recently began construction of a facility expecting to employ over 300 workers in the southside industrial park. (5) Muncie Power Products has purchased the former Brevini Wind facility near I-69 to expand operations. (6)

This article includes current data from public sources on various measures of economic activity for the Muncie MSA (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 Muncie metro saw a large decrease in its unemployment rate as the labor market continued to open after the pandemic-related shutdowns that began in March 2020. The local unemployment rate fell from 6.1% in September 2020 to 3.8% in September 2021 (see Table 1). Along with the unemployment rate, total unemployment saw a similar decrease--going from 3,250 in September 2020 to 2,015 in September 2021 (a 38% decline). The labor force saw a very slight increase--going from 52,889 to 52,917 (+0.1%) over this same period. With a stagnant labor force and decreasing unemployment, we can see that people who continued looking for jobs are...