Surviving A Worker Drought

A 1.5% unemployment rate is forcing an Indiana county’s businesses to get creative

- Cristina Lindblad

In his 26 years as mayor of Carmel, Ind., the largest city in a county with deep Republican roots, Jim Brainard has overseen its transformation from a sleepy Indianapolis suburb into one of the fastest growing communities in the country. The population has quintupled, to a little over 100,000, spurred by the relocation of corporate headquarters to the area and a residential construction boom that shows few signs of ending. Ask the staunch conservative what he thinks the top economic priorities should be nationally and you’ll get answers that are strikingly at odds with the GOP’s current agenda. The U.S., argues Brainard, needs looser immigration laws to attract more migrants and higher wages for low-income service workers. “Those are the two biggest challenges” for the American economy, he says.

Brainard’s views reflect Carmel’s circumstances. Inflation running at 40-year highs may be the economic issue dominating the conversation in government offices and C-suites across much of the country, but in this city, along with the rest of Hamilton County, the chatter among businesses and local officials is more often about a labor market that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently called “tight to an unhealthy level.”

With an unemployment rate more than 2 percentage points below the national figure, Hamilton County’s employers are engaged in a furious recruiting drive to fill positions ranging from chief technology officers to supermarket cake decorators. Job applicants are so scarce that manufacturers are turning to inmates on work- release from the local jail.