Northwest Indiana needs to concentrate on attracting more jobs that require higher education, an economics expert said Friday.
While Northwest Indiana has historically relied on high-paying jobs in manufacturing, Indiana University Northwest economics professor Mikah Pollak said, its fastest-growing sector in recent years has been low-paying service jobs, as in restaurants.
Nationally, he said, the economy has been growing with higher-paying service jobs that require college education.
More Top Picks How To Dim Screens To Reduce Eye Pain
Speaking at the annual Business and Economic Outlook, Pollak said Northwest Indiana’s economy has been “basically stable” since 2009, while the national and Indiana economies have grown.
He forecast a 1.5 percent economic growth for Northwest Indiana in 2017, with 1,500 new jobs and a $450 million increase in the region’s Gross Metropolitan Product – an analogy he devised to the national and state Gross Domestic Product.
Pollak’s talk was one of a morning-long series of presentations, sponsored by the Northwest Indiana Business Roundtable and the Construction Advancement Foundation, at the Ivy Tech campus in Valparaiso.
Among the other speakers:
*Bill Hanna, president and CEO of the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, said building better rail commuter links to Chicago — the South Shore Line’s planned West Lake extension and its double-track extension from Gary to Michigan City — will bring new residents and jobs to Northwest Indiana and help revive its urban areas.
The Illinois suburbs around Chicago are connected to the city with more than 500 miles of rail lines while Northwest Indiana has only one. The region’s “transportation desert,” Hanna said, helps create “an income desert.”
*David Holt, vice president for Conexus Indiana, said the logistics sector of the Indiana economy has been growing good-paying jobs but has a critical need for better highways.
Indiana needs to invest $1 billion a year more in road upkeep and construction than it does now, Holt said. “If we don’t, it’ll come back to haunt us and haunt our children.”
Holt also said manufacturers are running short of unskilled as well as skilled laborers, and that national regulations, taxes and health care rules are driving companies away.
*Peter Novak, CEO of the Greater Northwest Indiana Association of Realtors, said a shortage of new housing has pushed the median house sales price in Northwest Indiana higher than it was before the 2007 housing crash.
*Karl Stanley, vice president of commercial operations for NIPSCO, said the plentiful supply of natural gas in recent years has “changed everything” in the energy industry and caused NIPSCO to step back from its reliance on coal-powered electric plants.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.