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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, September 2, 2010

Labor Day in Indiana by the numbers

Some statistics from the Indiana Business Research Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 2, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Just in time for Labor Day this Monday (Sept. 6), the Indiana Business Research Center in Indiana University's Kelley School of Business has offered some interesting facts and figures about the Indiana labor force.

The Indiana Labor Force

• There were 3.1 million people in Indiana's labor force in July 2010 (seasonally adjusted). Indiana's labor force ranks as the nation's 16th largest and accounts for 2 percent of the U.S. total.
• 10.2 percent of the Hoosier labor force was unemployed in July 2010. The unemployment rate for the United States was 9.5 percent for the same month.
• All Indiana employees worked, on average, 34.6 hours each week in 2009. This measure was down from 35.5 hours in 2007. Hoosier production workers logged an average of 39.3 hours per week in 2009 -- the first time this decade that this indicator dipped below 40 hours. Indiana's average weekly production hours have been above 40 each month of 2010 so far.
• The average annual wage per job in Indiana in 2009 was $38,271. The industries with the highest average wages were management of companies, $72,071, and utilities, $71,457. The manufacturing industry, which accounted for 16 percent of Hoosier employment in 2009, had an average annual wage of $52,387.
• There were 371,621 Indiana firms without any employees in 2008. These small Indiana firms, which largely represent self-employed workers, generated $14 billion in total receipts and an average of $37,700 per firm.

Indiana's Top Occupations

• 15.5 percent of Indiana workers were employed in office and administrative support occupations in May 2009. Indiana's other top occupation types were production occupations (11.4 percent), sales and related occupations (10.4 percent) and food preparation and serving (9.3 percent).
• There were 14,100 new registered nurse positions expected in Indiana between 2006 and 2016 -- the largest projected numeric growth of any occupation. If projections hold true, registered nurses will be Indiana's fifth largest occupation in 2016 with 68,500 jobs. Other health care positions expected to see substantial growth are home health aides (5,400) and nursing aides (5,200).
• The number of network systems and data communication analysts in Indiana is projected to grow by 47 percent between 2006 and 2016. This is the state's fastest expected growth rate followed by home health aides (46 percent) and veterinary technologists and technicians (40 percent). As a sign of the times, the occupations expected to decline at the greatest rate over this period are photographic processing machine operators, file clerks and telephone operators.

The Indiana Business Research Center is part of a national network of State Data Centers and acts as the official state representative to the Census Bureau on matters relating to the census and population estimates. The IBRC also develops and maintains STATS Indiana, the award winning, state-supported Web service (www.stats.indiana.edu).

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