I’d like to introduce you to data from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, one of the State Data Center’s long time partners in providing access to public data about Indiana. The Indiana DWD produces data and reports about state employment at multiple geographic levels using its website Hoosiers by the Numbers, or HoosierData.IN.gov. With assistance from another SDC partner, the Indiana Business Research Center, they have created dashboards and data visualizations to make it easier for us to understand the current state of employment and labor market in the state.
Let’s start with the county quick stats.
You can drill down immediately to county-level data on the first page of Hoosiers by the Numbers with a clickable map of all 92 counties. With one click, you’ll receive a county profile full of data highlights covering population, education, commuting, labor force, industry and income.
If you choose St. Joseph County in northern Indiana and click the tab for commuting, you’ll see that the total picture of this county in 2023 includes workers who came from the state of Michigan and also from Elkhart, LaPorte and Marshall counties in Indiana to work in St. Joseph. The majority of workers (84%) traveled by car/truck/van to get to work. Five percent of workers used a motorcycle, bicycle or walked to work. One percent took public transportation. Almost 10% of workers worked from home.
You can look county-by-county to see a comparison of where people came from to work in Indiana counties and how they traveled to get to work. You can download your results in Excel, Word or PDF formats.
If you choose the tab for industry, you’ll see the people who worked in various industries within each county. For Vanderburgh County in the southwest corner of the state, the majority of people worked in health care and social assistance services in 2023. Manufacturing, retail trade and food service round out the top four.
Under the income tab, you’ll see an industry breakdown with the average pay a person received. In Marion County, the top income in 2023 was in company management ($121,032), followed by Utilities ($115,447). The bottom industries in the county were food services ($27,629) and retail trade ($41,036).
To the right of the quick stats, you’ll find the workforce economy dashboard. Here, you can take a quick look at a real-time statewide picture of employment and how different indicators are increasing or decreasing by the month.
The Hoosiers by the Numbers website is designed to be navigated by a row of tabs at the top.
There are two ways to navigate the site by audience. If you are currently looking for a job, explore the job seekers resources to study up on the labor market you’re diving into and preview the employment outlook projections, as well as the hourly wage dashboard to see the average wage or salary for the different occupations across the state. If you are an employer or business owner, explore the employer resources.
The tab for topics allows you narrow your search for workforce data by topic. For example, choose clusters to view Indiana data by industry cluster or choose economic indicators to look at the statewide indexes and monthly GDP growth chart. You can also view all of the data on the topic of occupations.
Under the tab for “Tools” on the main page, you can click on a variety of data tools, including infographics. For example, “What did Hoosiers study in college?” can show you how many people of varying generations studied a range of topics. But don’t stop there. Under the “Regions” tab, choose the business lookup tool to explore a listing of businesses in your county, georeferenced to pop up on the map. Each listing includes the name, industry, address, number of employees and annual sales.
The Indiana DWD produces current monthly county city, and MSA employment reports that you can access through this website.
Lastly, the DWD Data Request Portal allows you to request data directly from the agency and explains the difference between what is publicly available and what is restricted. Both are available upon request.
Please bookmark this website and plan to revisit it throughout the year, as it is continually updated with the most up-to-date labor market data in Indiana. As always, contact the State Data Center for more information about locating the data you need!
This blog post was written by Katie Springer, reference librarian and director of the Indiana State Data Center. For more information, contact the Reference and Government Services Division at 317-232-3678, or submit an Ask-A-Librarian request.
*A note on the terminology. When data is seasonally adjusted, this means the seasonal patterns are removed from the data using statistical techniques. This is done to smooth out the data and make a clearer picture of the employment data trends. For more information, see the Census Bureau webpage for time series and seasonal adjustment. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas also offers a good explanation.