Nine years ago, Elkhart County, Indiana, was a poster child for the Great Recession. Now it has a problem it could only have wished for back then: too many jobs and not enough people.
Like many places, the northern Indiana county runs a website and a marketing pitch to attract business investment. Unlike most, though, it has moved part of its marketing budget toward a different target. It is now courting workers, and lots of them, from almost anywhere in the world.
Mark Dobson, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Elkhart County, compared the situation with 2008. Back then, local unemployment hovered around 20 percent. Today, he said, the number of open jobs is almost as serious a concern as the lack of jobs was then. There are not enough qualified people for the positions opening every day. He admitted it is a nice problem to have. Still, it will stop being one if big employers keep needing more skilled labor, he warned.
The numbers behind the boom
Last year brought 14 major expansions and one relocation. As a result, the county needed 2,500 new workers. In 2017, 10 more companies expanded significantly, adding a need for another 3,000 employees. Three new companies also moved in. On top of that, 20 sites serving the RV industry are under construction, which means a minimum of 3,500 more jobs.
Dobson said the county is booming, faster than the growth rate of the US Census Bureau.
Recreational vehicles are the county’s main industry, and business there is spiking, with a further rise projected for 2018. Because workers are now even more urgently needed, Elkhart County promotes itself through job search engines that reach people in many countries. Its main tool is the ElkhartWorks site.
Dobson said it is hard, if not impossible, to measure how many people learned about the county online and moved there. Any surge in local applicants would also take time to show. Still, the analytics look positive, he explained. Many visitors stay long enough to explore the site and browse the job listings. He sees the campaign as one that draws attention to the whole region, including St. Joseph County.
Why the RV industry swung back
Ironically, RVs drove both the slump and the recovery. When retirement funds shrank in the recession, RVs became a luxury people could skip. As the economy recovered, surviving companies merged or bought rivals and often consolidated in Elkhart County. The area was already known as the RV Capital of the World. Now more than 80 percent of the industry’s manufacturers and suppliers are based there.
According to Dobson, an industry that was already concentrated in the county became even more so. He said younger people are buying RVs, while retirees have rebuilt their savings. Other firms have followed in a chain reaction, since suppliers want to sit near manufacturers.
Openings go well beyond RVs, too. There are jobs in healthcare, education, engineering, construction and management at several levels. Hourly pay ranges from $15 to $55, and many manufacturers pay by the piece, so workers can earn more than base pay.
Dobson also pointed to a cost of living below the US average and far below big-city levels. Chicago and Lake Michigan are two hours or less away, while Indianapolis and Detroit are about two and a half and three hours away. He said local schools rank among the safest in the state. Notre Dame, Indiana University South Bend and Indiana Ivy Tech are within an hour’s drive. He also cited thriving small towns, support for new businesses and Midwestern values shaped in part by the local Amish community. Now, he said, the county simply has to let people know it is there.
