The self-proclaimed RV capital of the world gives a glimpse of what the American economy looks like when operating at full tilt.
For Bob Davis’s full story with video and graphs originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
No place in the U.S. has seen a labor-market turnaround like this metropolitan region of 110,000 workers, a mix of blue-collar whites, Mexican immigrants and Amish.
Elkhart has unique economic conditions – its good fortune is tied to a central role in the revival of the RV market, where neither automation nor foreign competition is a threat.
But the consequences of a high-pressure labor market may soon be common. As the U.S. turns the page on a decade of post-crisis underemployment, Elkhart, Ind., points to a future of labor shortages and fights over workers.
The jobless rate in the Elkhart region plunged from 20 percent in March 2009, worst in the U.S., to just over 2 percent in January, half the national average. The local unemployment rate is actually closer to zero: some 9,500 jobs have no takers. Each day, about 25,000 workers commute into Elkhart city, population 50,000. A county economic development agency is hunting for job candidates across Appalachia and as far as Puerto Rico.
The local jobs rebound is the largest among 403 metro areas analyzed for The Wall Street Journal by Moody’s Analytics. As the national unemployment rate drops toward 4 percent, the Elkhart region has been at that level or below for 34 consecutive months. The rest of the U.S. might never match Elkhart’s sizzling pace, but the region could show what lies ahead.
