Will Indiana be spared a deep recession?

• Position: Indiana Indicators

Talk to people in Indiana about recessions and you quickly discover a generation gap. For some of our youngest adults, a rising unemployment rate is a completely new experience. Older residents will remember the deep, painful economic downturns that hit our state in the 1970s and early 1980s.

But few will mention the recession of 1991, and with good reason. That downturn largely spared Indiana. In fact, the 1991 recession only produced one year when the Indiana economy lost jobs, a fairly mild 14,600-job contraction in 1991. That's a pale shadow of the events of the early 1980s, when the Indiana economy lost more than 200,000 jobs.

Which path will the 2001 recession follow? From the sketchy data available today, it appears that this recession will be the more shallow variety. Since the U.S. recession officially began in March, job losses in Indiana have been slight. But it's risky to make that call. For one thing, Indiana and most Midwestern states started suffering employment declines well before last March.

In the final analysis, the severity of the recession in Indiana will largely be determined by how, and how fast, the national economy recovers.

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Employment (000) Latest Previous Period Period U.S. Nov. 01 131,431.0 131,762.0 Indiana Nov. 01 2,994.1 2,996.5 Manufacturing Employment (000) U.S. Nov. 01 17,161.0 17,324.0 Indiana Nov. 01 645.1 649.0 Non-manufacturing Employment (000) U.S. Nov. 01 114,270.0 114,438.0 Indiana Nov. 01 2,349.0 2,347.5...