South Bend and Elkhart forecast 2023.

• Author: Zhuang, Hong

Both the South Bend-Mishawaka and Elkhart-Goshen MSAs had a prosperous 2022, with expanded labor forces, higher employment numbers and impressively low unemployment rates. The tight labor market is associated with higher labor cost in both areas. In addition, St. Joseph County housing prices continued to rise, though new single-family home construction and existing home sales softened.

Labor force and employment

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force in the combined South Bend-Mishawaka and Elkhart-Goshen MSAs averaged 277,364 in the first eight months of 2022, an increase of 6,513 from the same time period last year. (1) Figure 1 displays the monthly trends of the labor force and employment of the combined region. (2) The labor force increased by 1,489 in the South Bend-Mishawaka MSA and 5,023 in the Elkhart-Goshen MSA. (3) Compared to the pre-pandemic level, South Bend-Mishawaka's labor force is still 6,659 below the 2019 figure, whereas Elkhart-Goshen's labor force has surpassed the 2019 figure by 7,144. (4)

The average employment in the combined region was 269,884 in the first eight months of 2022, 10,349 more than the same time period in 2021 (+4.0%). The South Bend-Mishawaka MSA created 4,273 more jobs (+2.9%) and the Elkhart-Goshen MSA added 6,076 jobs (+5.4%). The state and national employment growth rates from 2021 to 2022 were 3.0% and 4.4%, respectively. The Elkhart-Goshen MSA once again outperformed Indiana and the nation in terms of job growth. The South Bend-Mishawaka MSA's employment growth rate was similar to that of the state, but fell behind the national rate.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate continued to decline in both metropolitan areas in 2022. Figure 2 traces the South Bend-Mishawaka and Elkhart-Goshen MSAs' unemployment rates from January 2002 to August 2022. The average unemployment rate in the South Bend-Mishawaka MSA was 3.2% in 2022, a decrease from the 2021 rate of 5.1%. The South Bend-Mishawaka unemployment rate has even dropped below the pre-pandemic rate of 3.8% in 2019. Elkhart-Goshen's jobless rate was 2.0% in 2022, one percentage point lower than the 2021 rate and 1.1 percentage points below the pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 3.1% in 2019. Not only was Elkhart-Goshen's unemployment rate far below the state and national rates (2.8% for Indiana and 3.8% for the U.S.), but it also reached its lowest point since 1990. Meanwhile, South Bend-Mishawaka's unemployment rate was 0.4 percentage points higher than the state jobless rate, but 0.6 percentage points below the national rate. This is also the lowest unemployment rate in the South Bend-Mishawaka MSA since 2001.

Employment by industry

Based on the business establishment survey from the Bureau of Labor...