It was a problem that many Indiana cities also faced at the turn of the last century as well, as the industrial age was changing the economic landscape.  Towns like Marion and Muncieprospered in part by offering cheap land and good access to transportation for capitalists to build their factories, which would be followed, in turn, by workers and their families.  Some companies actually built worker villages right along with their factories, turning vacant tracts of city land into neighborhoods almost overnight.

That’s a formula we still see followed in the development of greenfield factory sites likePrinceton and Lafayette .  But today’s economy just isn’t creating those kinds of jobs anymore.  For every story of good news at a Toyota or Subaru, there’s a more than offsetting story of job loss and attrition at countless production facilities across the state and nation.  In the last decade and a half, jobs in production-related occupations have not only failed to keep up with hiring in the rest of the economy, in most lines of work they’ve actually shrunk in number.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that a kid thinking about a career as a die-maker or a line worker should try something else.  With retirement and normal turnover, the prospects for catching on in these occupations is reasonably good.  But it’s a whole another thing for a community to successfully add to its economic base by attracting new production-related jobs.  That requires growth, not just turnover.

That much most of us understand.  We see it in front of us everyday, as the number of cars in factory parking lots grows ever smaller. What is harder to understand is how to alter our “pitch” to be successful in recruiting and retaining companies who are creating the high-paying, knowledge-based jobs the services-producing side of the economy has been creating in droves.

These companies are concerned with costs, just as the capitalists of a century ago were, but they are of an entirely different sort. They don’t need cheap land or labor so much as they need access to a wide range of specialized resources, including talented workers, well-positioned partners, and specialized services like air transport and laboratory testing.  If your town doesn’t have, or can’t attract those things, then it is high cost – even if you give them a building for free.

It’s not to late to change, of course, and necessity is the best teacher.  But we need to understand how growth works if we are to ensure that no Indiana community is left behind.