Indiana’s unemployment rate is 3.9 percent for April, remaining unchanged from the month before. The data is preliminary, but may show a slight slowing in economic recovery from the ongoing pandemic.
Not only did the unemployment rate pause from a steady decline, the number of people saying they’re able to work stayed mostly unchanged, too. That’s as employment slipped and the raw number of unemployed Hoosiers increased for the first time in a year, although both only slightly.
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Kyle Anderson, economics professor at Indiana University, said there’s still a lot of gray area about people’s relationship to work that’s hard to capture in the data. He added that a supposed labor shortage doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
“To me there’s a flip side to that, which is that there’s a lot of jobs available right now and a lot of wages are probably climbing,” he said.
Areas like Elkhart – where the RV industry is undergoing a major boom in production – have local unemployment rates even lower than state. But other areas like Kokomo, Gary and Michigan City remain several percentage points higher.
Contact reporter Justin at jhicks@wvpe.org or follow him on Twitter at @Hicks_JustinM.
