The Good Jobs Gap

Several   recent   reports  examining the Central Indiana economy by the Brookings Institute have defined “good jobs” as jobs that “provide middle-class wages and benefits.” The   Good Jobs Institute  defines a good job as one that “meets people’s basic needs and offers conditions for engagement and motivation.” Beyond pay and benefits, the Good Jobs Institute also cites predictable schedules, career advancement opportunities, job security, and physical safety as characteristics of a good job. 

Local cost of living determines what wages are considered adequate. For example, places with a higher cost of living will have a higher wage threshold for high-quality jobs than more affordable markets. In other words, a good job in one city might not be a good job in another city.

Of particular interest in Central Indiana—defined here as  the 11-county Indianapolis Metropolitan Statistical Area  —are jobs that pay a living wage and have benefits for workers without a bachelor’s degree. Despite significant increases in the share of people with a bachelor’s degree over the past few decades, the overwhelming majority of people still do not have one. In Central Indiana, just 36 percent of people over the age of 25 have at least a bachelor’s degree and   fewer graduating high schoolers are choosing college   than in past years. Accordingly, it’s essential that the region is able to provide enough jobs for workers without bachelor's degrees that allow for healthy and successful lives. 

Furthermore, bachelor's degree attainment is unequally distributed across factors like race and geography: Only one fifth of Central Indiana’s Black residents have a bachelor’s degree along with only 14 percent of Decatur Township (Marion County). In order to build an equitable and just economy, it’s important for these good jobs to be available to traditionally underserved and marginalized communities.  

Most analyses of good jobs look at two primary variables: wages and private health insurance. The Brookings Institute estimated in 2018 that the national threshold for a good job was an annual wage of $40,700 (about $19.50 per hour) and health insurance. Adjusting for regional differences in cost of living, that figure was about $37,000 in Central Indiana.  

For the purposes of this article, we are going to consider any worker that has an annual wage of at $40,000 or above and private health insurance to have a good job in the Indianapolis metro area. This is for a few reasons.  

First, our primary data sources are the 2019   Census Bureau Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)  and   2019 Census Bureau Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS)  . PUMS allows for users to pull data at any specified wage level while LEHD groups jobs into wage buckets with the largest being an annual wage of $40,000 or higher. Setting a wage threshold of $40,000 allows us to compare workers and jobs between these two core data sources.    

Additionally, we are examining newer data (2019) than what was used in the Brookings reports (2014-2018). The cost-of-living increases over time so using a higher wage threshold ensures we are accurately analyzing good jobs when accounting for inflation. While on the topic of inflation, it’s important to point out that the worker-specific data in this article comes from before the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s likely that a Central Indiana worker would need more than $40,000 to “meet basic needs” in 2022.    

Finally, nearly everyone making at least $40,000 also has private health insurance in Central Indiana. Only about 2.5% of workers in the area make that wage but do not have health insurance. The PUMS dataset allows us to filter by both wage and insurance status; LEHD only shows wage groupings. We look at wages and insurance where possible, but where it is not available we simply use the $40,000 wage threshold as a proxy measure for a good job.   

Before examining good jobs specifically, it’s helpful to view the landscape of jobs and workers in Central Indiana more generally. 

There are some positive trends for job markets in the state and region that are worth highlighting.  

Indiana has strong job growth compared to most other Midwestern states. Since 2006 Indiana has one of the highest job growth rates in the region. Only North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska have added more jobs than Indiana over this sixteen-year period. North Dakota significantly outpaced all other states in the region  due to a transformative oil boom . 

Most of the state’s job gains occurred in Central Indiana. In fact, of the 190,000 jobs added over the last 15 years, more than 170,000 came from the 11-county Indianapolis metro area. Many of these jobs would not be considered good jobs by our criteria, but still, Central Indiana residents have more new job opportunities in 2022 than those living in any other region of the state.

Central Indiana also experienced strong job growth compared to other major Midwestern Metro areas. Only the Columbus, Ohio metro area has seen consistently stronger job growth than the Indianapolis metro area since 2006. Other areas, like the Detroit and Cleveland metros, suffered huge losses during the Great Recession (2007-2009) and have yet to recover to pre-pandemic job levels of 2019. The Indianapolis metro area, on the other hand, emerged from smaller losses during the recession and has since outperformed the US average.  

In their 2021 “ State of Renewal ” report, Brookings found that Indiana ranked 11th out of all states on the share of workers without a bachelor’s degree who are employed in a good job. A majority of good jobs in the state were held by workers without a bachelor’s degree. Also, Central Indiana had the highest share of all workers in good jobs when compared to other regions of the state. 

Our analysis found that 43% of workers in Central Indiana have a good job with at least $40,000 in annual wages and private health insurance. While this might be a high share compared to other regions around the state, it is still the case that nearly six in ten jobs do not meet the “good jobs” threshold.  

Census data shows the location of each job in the metro area. By mapping the change in the number of jobs paying more than $40,000 per year, we can see where good jobs have increased or declined between 2010 and 2019. (This does not account for inflation. $40,000 had more purchasing power in 2010 than 2019.)  

It's clear that Central Indiana has strong job growth, and there are some bright spots when it comes to good jobs. But, we are most interested in jobs that are good for workers without bachelor’s degrees—a majority of the region’s workforce.  

Workers without a bachelor’s degree make up 61 percent of the total workforce in Central Indiana. The remaining 39 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree or more. Only 29 percent of workers without a bachelor’s have what we consider a good job compared to 65 percent of workers with.  

Beyond differences in the rate of good jobs between workers based on education level, there are significant disparities in good job levels between different groups on several other key variables.  

Geography

In general, areas outside of Marion County have a higher share of workers without bachelor’s degrees in a good job compared to those inside. Across Marion County’s townships, between 19 and 23 percent of non-bachelor's degree workers have a good job. In the rest of the region, the average rate is 35 percent. The area with the highest good jobs rate for workers without a bachelor’s degree is Carmel & West Fishers, where 40 percent of such workers have a good job. Contrast that with Center Township in Marion County–the urban core of the metro area. Only 19 percent of workers without bachelor’s degrees in this area have a good job.  

Good jobs for workers without bachelor’s degrees aren’t just concentrated in the affluent suburbs of Hamilton County like Fishers and Carmel. This jobs data from the Census Bureau’s Public Use Microdata divides Central Indiana into sixteen smaller areas. In terms of good jobs for non-bachelor's degree workers, the area covering Hancock & Shelby Counties ranked fourth. The area combining Morgan, Putnam, & Brown counties ranked 5th. These counties have lower income and educational attainment than the region overall, and they have a very high concentration of workers without a bachelor’s degree. But, relative to the rest of the region, a large share of these workers have good jobs.  

The map below shows the rate of good jobs for workers without bachelor’s degrees (left) compared to the good jobs rate for workers with (right) in each area. Darker areas have higher rates of good jobs. 

Some areas have very large gaps between the good jobs rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree compared to those without. In Noblesville and East Fishers, for example, 80 percent of workers with a bachelor’s degree have a good job compared to just 35 percent of non-bachelor's degree workers. In south and east Washington Township (on the north side of Marion County), 70 percent of workers with bachelor’s degrees have a good job compared to just 23 percent of workers without a bachelor’s. 

Transportation

Access to good jobs in Central Indiana is strongly linked to access to reliable transportation. While only six percent of all Central Indiana households do not have car access, access varies widely by location. Workers living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods near the center of Indianapolis are much less likely to own a car than those in suburban counties.

That means in order to get to new good jobs in areas like Plainfield in Hendricks County,   many workers in the urban core rely on public transportation  . Since the region's major transit agency (IndyGo) only operates within Marion County's borders, this can prove a significant challenge. 

Race & Ethnicity

As with most facets of American life, race and ethnicity are significant dividing lines when it comes to job quality for workers. Even with similar education levels, White workers are more likely to have a good job than workers of color. Among people without a bachelor’s degree, 31 percent of White workers have a good job compared to 20 percent of Black workers. Among people with a bachelor’s degree, 65 percent of White workers have a good job compared to 50 percent of Black workers.  

Sex

Although the Central Indiana workforce is almost evenly split between male and female workers, the good-jobs rate varies significantly between them. Half of male workers have a good job compared to just 35 percent of female workers. The gaps persist when splitting the data by education level. Male workers with a bachelor's degree are 14 points more likely to have a good job than female workers with a bachelor’s degree. For those without bachelor’s, the gap is nearly the same: male workers are 15 points more likely to have a good job.

Industry

Industries vary widely in both the numbers of non-bachelor's degree workers they employ and how many of these workers have good jobs. Most workers without a bachelor’s degree are concentrated in a handful of industries.

However, most of these industries do not provide good jobs to a large share of these workers. Only manufacturing ranks highly both on the list of industries with large numbers of workers without bachelor’s degrees (above) and industries that provide good jobs to a high percentage of these workers (below).  

Manufacturing is a good jobs sweet-spot: It both employs large numbers of workers without bachelor’s degrees, and provides many of them a good job. However, it’s also an industry that has been hit hard by job losses and economic disruptions in recent years. In total, there are 36,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in the region than there were in 1990. Despite an uptick between 2011 and 2019, job levels remain much lower than several decades prior.  

Using   WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) data   from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, we can see when employers have closed or laid off workers since 2008 in the Indianapolis metro area. The industries with high concentrations of good jobs for workers without bachelor’s degrees are also often the industries hardest hit by economic downturns, international trade disruptions, and unforeseen circumstances. 

The two time periods with the highest number of jobs lost due to employer closures were 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession and 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic. Layoffs, commonly more temporary separation from employment, were most common during the pandemic when many employers had to temporarily shut down.

The manufacturing sector had the highest concentration of job losses due to employer closure followed by transportation and warehousing, retail trade, and health care. Layoffs also affected manufacturing significantly along with accommodation and food services. Manufacturing operations have traditionally used a high number of workers without bachelor’s degrees at single facilities meaning that just one plant closure affects lots of workers.  

The map below shows some of the largest employer closures from 2008 to 2020. Manufacturing employers are featured heavily.

The path to a strong economy for workers without bachelor’s degrees will involve creative efforts to innovate and move forward. Despite the challenging headwinds, there are efforts by local leaders to bring more good jobs to Central Indiana.  

For example, the City of Indianapolis  recently instituted wage and benefit requirements  for employers seeking to apply for tax abatement incentives when relocating to the city. This initiative came directly from the Brookings Institute reports mentioned in this article and has heavy involvement from industry stakeholders. 

Some efforts include directly redeveloping vacant sites where large employers left the area years ago. The eastside Navistar plant featured in the map above is currently being r e-developed as a logistics park   that hopefully will provide good jobs to many workers just like the former plant did. The former GM Stamping Plant near the White River on the near westside is slated to be a  new global headquarters for Elanco Animal Health  in a $100 million project.  

Other initiatives feature partnerships between major corporations and nonprofit organizations like the 38th and Sheridan project on the eastside. Cook Medical and Goodwill Industries are partnering to create a manufacturing facility, grocery store, and job training opportunities at the site and are committed to preparing and employing residents in that neighborhood. Community leaders hope that targeted investments like this in historically overlooked areas can help bridge the gap between workers currently without good job opportunities and employers who need workers.