The Indianapolis labor force is large, complex and ever-changing. About 500,000 people work in Indianapolis, and nearly a million in Central Indiana. That already is a vast pool of labor. But if there is to be growth and development, there must be a stream of new workers.

So where do new workers come from? We identified 10 types of workers who enter the Indianapolis workforce in substantial and consistent numbers each year. The following table lists the new-entrant categories and provides a rough estimate of how many arrive each year. In strictly numerical terms, these 25,000 or so new workers hardly make a splash in the regional labor force of a million. Yet each passing year compounds the small incremental changes. It is eye-opening to consider the raw materials from which tomorrow’s workforce is being made.

Source: Indianapolis Private Industry Council computations based on data from several sources noted in text

College attainment is coming along at a good pace. College graduates represent the largest segment of all new entrants, and the number may be even larger than the chart suggests.

High school dropouts, fortunately, are a small sliver of the annual new-entrant pie. Still, 900 more dropouts each year become a problem as they accumulate in number, especially since few of them will ever return to school. Some dropouts become successful, but social indicators such as incomes, arrest records, divorces and early mortality all testify that dropping out of school is a wrong move.

Many readers will be surprised at the large number of new entrants from the prison systems. All the numbers in this chart are estimated, but the number of men and women released from prisons back into Marion County each year is more definite and solid than most of the other figures.

Here are some details about each of these categories of labor force entrants:

College graduates with bachelor’s and higher degrees: About 5,927 to 6,080 a year. College graduates are highly mobile. Indianapolis employers recruit college talent from a national, if not global, pool of talent. Still, most graduates find work near where they grew up or where they studied. This estimate focuses on the smaller pool of college entrants from local sources. Marion County has four private institutions awarding bachelor’s degrees (Butler University, Marian College, Martin University and University of Indianapolis) and the public campus of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. Together, these five institutions award about 5,927 bachelor’s degrees in a year,⁷ generating the low end of our estimated range. IUPUI alone awarded about 3,962.⁸ Of course, not all students at Indianapolis colleges are Indianapolis residents, and a share of them will return home after graduating. Conversely, some students live in Indianapolis but study elsewhere. There were 6,080 Indianapolis residents in the final year of a bachelor’s degree program at Indiana’s public institutions in 2005-06,⁹ and most of them went directly into the workforce. While not all Indianapolis college grads will stay in Indianapolis, we use this number as the high end of our estimated range. 

Still, these are low estimates. The state’s private colleges have not been factored into the second number, since they do not report enrollments by county of students’ residence. It is sufficient to observe that local college graduates account for more than a quarter of annual new entrants, and potentially much more.

Ex-offenders: About 5,000 a year. Each year, state and federal prisons release about 5,000 people back into society in Indianapolis. Many of them will be required to stay here as a condition of their parole. And, unlike most other types of new labor force entrants, the supply of ex-offenders is not affected by the economy. Most other groups, from the recruited top talent to Hispanic immigrants, come because they know work is available here and presumably would stop coming if opportunities ceased. The prison system doesn’t work that way. When a prisoner has served his sentence, he will be released and expected to return to society and support himself, whether the economy is growing or not. 

A prison record legally disqualifies a person from many jobs. Employer choice shuts the door in many other places. And even open-minded employers will be apt to hire someone with recent work experience over someone who hasn’t worked in months or years. The ex-offenders have many strikes against them as they try to re-enter the workforce. And yet these figures show that ex-offenders represent roughly half of all annual new entrants without college degrees.

College dropouts: About 4,000 a year. See College dropouts are a problem, too.

Recruited top talent: Fewer than 1,000 a year. At the very top are a few dozen professional athletes and corporate chief executive officers. Just below them are talented and experienced workers from various occupations, who are recruited by Indianapolis companies or institutions. They can come from anywhere in the world. They demand top-dollar wages, and they come only when they are enticed.

Associate’s college graduates: 3,561 a year. Many of the best new opportunities in the workforce require postsecondary training, but less than a bachelor’s degree. Most of them are in health careers, construction or business. This results in a large pool of people graduating with an associate’s degree. This estimate assumes that students in the second year of a two-year associate’s degree program in 2005-06 entered the workforce later that year. The value shown here is the number of Indianapolis residents enrolled in Indiana’s public community colleges. A larger total could be computed if private college degrees awarded to Indianapolis residents were available.

Immigrants: 2,713 a year. In just four years, from 2002 to 2006, the Hispanic population of Indianapolis grew by 18,232.¹⁰ But only 10,855 of those were of working age, between 20 and 64 years. Assuming a high rate of participation, about 2,713 new Hispanic workers have been arriving each year. Not all immigrants are Hispanic, but data for the others are unavailable, and they are few in number. Many from Asian and European countries show up as college graduate entrants anyway.

New commuters: 2,284 a year. Indianapolis and Central Indiana draw workers from a wide area of Indiana, so we aren’t limited to people who live in Indianapolis. The most recent data show 198,507 people drive into Indianapolis each day from nearby and not so nearby counties. The commuter workforce in Indianapolis grows steadily from year to year. Since 1997, commuters have swelled by 34,265, or about 4,283 more commuters each year. But growth in the number of commuters has been slower recently, with only about 2,284 additional commuters a year since the recession of 2001. This category of new commuters probably duplicates some of the people counted in other categories of this report because many people with college degrees and people moving into Central Indiana from other states prefer to live in the suburbs and commute to their Indianapolis jobs.

High school graduates: 1,788 a year. This number is not the total number of local high school graduates, but only those who will enter the workforce after receiving a diploma. Indianapolis high schools, public and private, graduated 7,153 people in the 2005-06 academic year.¹¹ About 75 percent of them go on to college and enter the workforce only as temporary summer workers. The number of high school graduates entering the workforce as permanent workers is only about 1,788. Entering the workforce straight from high school means the job seeker has a limited choice of good opportunities. But some obtain college degrees by working full-time and studying part-time.

High school dropouts: 900 a year. The dropout rate for Indianapolis Public Schools in 2006 was 26.3 percent.¹² The rates in the township schools were less than half that, and for the parochial schools the dropout rate was negligible. All together, Indianapolis schools lose close to 900 kids a year before they’ve graduated. Not all these kids will enter the workforce. Those who do will be at a disadvantage that will likely affect them throughout their lives.

Re-entrants: Unknown. Research shows that about 22,300 people across Central Indiana are neither working nor looking for work, but would take a job if the right pay and conditions were available.¹³ They typically have valuable work experience, but are not highly motivated to work. Re-entrants are people who have burned out from a difficult job, who’ve quit to deal with a sickness or other family emergency or perhaps who’ve taken early retirement and then tired of idleness. There is no reliable estimate how many re-entrants actually return in a given year, but they potentially all would if the price were right.

7 The Value Added of Independence, Independent Colleges of Indiana, 2006 Fact Book, p. 21.

8 Dataset provided by Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

9 Dataset provided by Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

10 American Community Survey, various years.

11 IDEAnet.

12 IDEAnet.

13 Indianapolis Region Labor Availability Report, The Pathfinders, Dallas, Texas, August 2005, p. 17.