If all you want is three bulleted talking points, you will find them in this report. But our greater purpose is to give a detailed, yet balanced assessment of many aspects of the labor supply, presenting the information in as brief and accessible a fashion as possible. We won’t waste your time. But we also won’t attempt to make a long story short. Economist Graham S. Toft, who has been involved throughout Indiana for many years in economic and workforce development, once remarked, “If you aren’t confused, you probably aren’t thinking clearly.” His point was that complicated systems cannot be adequately understood with a few clear and simple facts. The labor supply is like that. There are so many details about it, and so many ways of measuring them, that any earnest search will find contradictions. This report finds, for example, that the educational attainment rate for Indianapolis adults is higher than ever before, but that we have a dropout crisis. Confused? Good! Then we’re getting somewhere.

We have not created this report electronically and put it on compact disk and online merely because we think computers are cool. We believe, and we hope that you will discover, that the flexible, user-driven format of this document enables you to get the most information in the shortest time. You can view the report cover to cover, or follow specific themes and threads. You can view only the summary screens, or drill down for more detail. You even can find links to the source data where you can do your own research and analysis. In other words, you can make this report work for you.

• Click on “2008 State of the Workforce” in the upper left of every screen to return to the table of contents.
• Click on the IPIC logo to return to the circle photo/navigation page.
• On the table of contents screen, click on the plus signs – “+” – to open the menu for each module.
• Click on the word “Introduction” or any of the five subject-matter modules listed across the top of this and every screen to go directly to that module.
• The arrows in the center below let you navigate from major subject to subject within a given module, and then on to the next one.
• If you want to drill down for more information on a topic, click on the “Tell me more” button at the bottom left.
• Click on the “View graph data” button under any graph to see the data used to create it.
• Click on the “View large graph” button to see a larger version of the graph.
• Click on the portraits to watch a video clip.
• The “subway” map on the bottom right helps you track where you are in each module. Roll over any circle, and you’ll see the title for that section. Click on it and you’ll go there.