Sure, General Motors is in trouble, and quite a few Indiana communities are directly in harm’s way.  The headlines say it all.  Plant closings – above and beyond those already planned – are on the way.  Their bonds are rated as junk.  Their market share is at an historic low.  And they’re discounting just about everything on the lot.

For a company that has been the number one automaker in the world for four generations, its recent stumbles have to be humbling.  Pressed by competition from abroad, and by a union agreement that limits its options to address its problems, GM is not far from what can only be called a crisis.

That’s certainly a problem for Indiana.  The economic footprint of GM in our state is huge.  We learned that during the wildcat strike eight years ago when a paralyzing shutdown at a Flint, Michigan facility practically stopped the company, sending shock waves through communities throughout the state.

But the demise of GM as the number one automaker, to my way of thinking, is just a symptom of a larger problem for the state of Indiana.  Should GM fail, or just get smaller, we have little else growing to eventually take its place.  We are a state that depends more on large, mature employers for our economic livelihood than any other in the nation.

More than half of the jobs and nearly 60 percent of the wages in our state’s private sector come from companies who employ more than 500 workers, according to the Small Business Administration.  That puts us in the top ten of “big business” states, higher than most of our Midwest neighbors.

But part of Indiana’s large company bias comes from the fact that we are a manufacturing state, since manufacturers tend to be larger than other kinds of businesses.  So let’s compare apples to apples – and examine how Indiana manufacturing companies compare in size to manufacturing companies in other states.

The results are even more stark.  In 2003, according to the payroll information from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Indiana’s average of just less than 70 workers per manufacturing facility was the highest in the nation.  Every one of the twelve development regions designated by the old Department of Commerce has manufacturing facilities substantially larger than the 38 worker national average.

The north central region of the state, centered in Kokomo, is home to the largest sized manufacturing facilities, whose average workforce is just short of 100 employees.  Even the smallest region, centered on New Albany along the Ohio River, has larger manufacturers than the national average.

So what?  Big companies pay good wages, don’t they?  And it’s hard to think of a community that doesn’t jealously guard – or covet, if they don’t already have – a Lilly, or a Cummins, or a Delphi facility in their midst.

For those lucky enough to have those jobs, it’s not a problem at all.   It’s the rest of the economy that’s at issue.  That’s because economies that are dominated by larger, mature companies are trailing the pack in overall job growth.  The best performing communities nationwide are those that have high rates of new business formation, and a high proportion of medium sized, faster growing companies.  Those two characteristics do not describe most parts of our state, unfortunately.

The success or failure of General Motors is something that its employees, managers, customers, and competitors will ultimately decide.  Clearly a healthy GM is a good thing for our state.  But if we’re ever going to gain ground on the rest of the country in economic growth, we’ve got to start planting some eggs in different baskets.