(INDIANAPOLIS) — As Indiana works to bring its economy back, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and its Foundation have launched a dashboard to keep track of key metrics related to the state’s progress. The Indiana Economic Recovery Dashboard – part of the organization’s new Accelerating Indiana Vision 2025+ initiative – compares on an ongoing basis how Indiana is doing in 10 indicators relative to neighboring and competing states.
Among the statistics analyzed are unemployment rate, labor force participation, average weekly earnings, personal income adjusted for cost of living and COVID-19 vaccination rate. The dashboard can be accessed at https://www.indianachamber.com/dashboard.
One encouraging finding is Indiana’s workforce participation is higher than neighboring states and the national average. At 63%, it’s only one percent off the competitor state mark.
“As our lives are returning to normal, it’s also time to again focus on Indiana’s place as an economic leader in the Midwest and beyond,” offers Indiana Chamber President and CEO Kevin Brinegar.
“The rest of this year will be especially critical to set the tone for recovery. Indiana can’t afford to be too far off the pace in any of these economic categories or risk losing some of the leverage it had prior to the pandemic for being an attractive place to do business and to enjoy a quality of life standard at a favorable cost of living.”
The ultimate goal, Brinegar says, should be for the state to build on past successes and aggressively pursue actions throughout the next six to 12 months to drive Indiana’s performance as high as possible in the key metrics.
Most of the 10 indicators are updated monthly, with the current dashboard reflecting May data. Two items – total change in wages and salaries, plus the state gross domestic product percentage change – are updated quarterly.
The dashboard is one of the significant projects of the organization’s $2 million Accelerating Indiana Vision 2025+ initiative. Other action items include the development of a new long-range economic plan for the state, public policy and problem-solving research projects around economic transformation and recovery, as well as building on existing employer and employee offerings from the Indiana Chamber and its affiliates.
Lead investors for Accelerating Indiana Vision 2025+ and the dashboard are Duke Energy, the Garatoni-Smith Family Foundation, Indiana Michigan Power, NIPSCO, Allegion, Beck’s, CenterPoint Energy, One America, Thompson Thrift and Wabash Valley Power Alliance. Full lists of investors and task force members are available at https://www.indianachamber.com/accelerate.
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The Indiana Chamber partners with 25,000 members and investors – representing over four million Hoosiers – to achieve the mission of “cultivating a world-class environment which provides economic opportunity and prosperity.”
