labor market

More than 30 percent of the state’s working-age population still isn’t working or looking for work, according to new preliminary estimates.

Federal data suggests Indiana lost manufacturing jobs in each of the last three months compared to the same months last year, but workforces in other industries grew and overall employment remained strong.

Along with not being useful indicators of where the labor market is going, this data is sometimes also not a super reliable measure of where the labor market has been.

Indiana’s unemployment rate may have reached a historic low, reaching just 2.7 percent in December. More workers found employment, but the overall labor force is continuing a months-long downward slide.