WASHINGTON – Delaware County is one of six in Indiana that hasn’t recovered to pre-recession levels of employment, home prices and economic growth, the National Association of Counties report.
The group used data from Moody's Analytics to track changes in four economic areas across the nation’s 3,069 counties.
While median home prices have recovered in all but 10 of Indiana’s 92 counties, only about a quarter of counties have returned to their pre-recession number of jobs or to their pre-recession unemployment rate.
Not quite half the state’s counties have fully recovered levels of economic output.
“Economic growth is spreading, but most county economies have not recovered to levels seen before the recession,” said Emilia Istrate, the organization’s research director.
Some counties — mostly in Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Mississippi — have not fully recovered in any of the four areas. Among those counties are six in Indiana: Delaware, Franklin, Madison, Tipton, Vermillion and Vigo.
By contrast, seven Hoosier counties are back to pre-recession levels for all four indicators: Clark, Elkhart, Gibson, LaGrange, Marshall, Steuben and Vanderburgh.
Most of the 214 fully recovered county economies nationwide are concentrated in Texas, Nebraska and Kansas.