By Josh Weinhold, Truth Staff
jweinhold@etruth.com
WASHINGTON -- Recent economic news in Elkhart County may be bright, but a new forecast predicts it will be a long time before the area is pure sunshine.
The report, released Wednesday at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting, projects the Elkhart-Goshen area won't return to pre-recession employment levels until after 2039.
Elkhart Mayor Dick Moore, attending the meetings with three of his staff, said he doesn't see it taking three decades for the area to bounce back -- because it's happening already.
"Personally, I think the economic experts who predicted when we'd start recovery have already missed it," he said between sessions at the Capital Hilton Hotel. "I expect that report will miss it, too. I don't think it will take nearly that long."
The 104-page document, titled 'U.S. Metro Economies: Pace of Economic Recovery,' was developed by IHS Global Insight, an international forecasting company with more than 3,800 clients in the public and private sectors. The document identified the pre-recession jobs peak for each of America's 369 metro areas, and concluded most communities won't see full recovery until the middle of the decade or later.
The Elkhart-Goshen region, however, has lost more than 27,000 jobs since its peak in the first quarter of 2006. That made it one of 15 metro areas predicted to reach its previous employment high after 2039.
The success the area enjoyed prior to the recession may have inflated the prediction, Moore said. The numbers may say it will take years to get there, he said, but a growing electric vehicle industry and companies rehiring laid off workers is proof that things are turning around.
"I suspect when it is that good, even a slight downturn is significant," said Moore, attending his first national mayors conference. "And then when you go to 20 percent (unemployment), it's even tougher."
Locals will 'prove people wrong'
Local business officials were also skeptical of the report's findings. David Findlay, chief financial officer of Lake City Bank, pointed to the local entrepreneurial spirit as the surest sign of success.
"Anyone who looks at Elkhart County and Elkhart County's prospects for jobs in a statistical vacuum doesn't understand the history of Elkhart County," he said. "If we've seen one thing, it's the businesses and entrepreneurs in Elkhart County tend to prove people wrong."
Many doubted Elkhart County would recover from the 1980-81 recession, Findlay said, but it did rebound and grow. The community also overcame the closure of Miles Laboratories several years later.
"Elkhart has reinvented itself on a number of occasions," Findlay said.
At the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce, vice president of public policy Kyle Hannon worried that the "academic exercise" could become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the county.
And, like Findlay, he noted the community has always found ways to heal itself economically. This time, the rebound could be led by the manufacturers announcing announced plans to build electric cars and trucks in Elkhart County.
"It's OK to make those predictions," he said, "but if our three electric vehicle companies take off, that could change everything."
Mayors: We'll spend money well
Other mayors at the conference, meanwhile, used the report as a rallying point.
At a morning press conference, a group of more than 20 held the document up as an example of the hardship in American communities. It's an indicator, they said, that more needs to be done to stimulate employment in cities and towns.
"We are in the middle of a jobs emergency," said Elizabeth Kautz, president of the conference and mayor of Burnsville, Minn. "Without a robust recovery in the metropolitan areas, there can be no recovery."
The mayors stressed the need for future federal funding be sent straight to cities, as community development block grants are currently. They also called on the Obama administration to make energy efficiency block grants, funded in 2009 through the economic stimulus package, a part of the 2010 fiscal year budget.
Stimulus money has been trickling to communities, the mayors said, because it was directed primarily through state government. Before the act was passed last year, the conference asked the administration to send the money to cities directly -- a sentiment echoed locally at the time by Moore.
"We're not the enemy," said Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter. "We know how to get things done. You send us money, we'll spend it well."
Truth staff writer Josh Weinhold is in Washington, D.C., reporting on the winter meeting. Marilyn Odendahl contributed reporting from Elkhart.