The Military in Indiana’s Economy

Much attention is being focused these days on the U.S. military. But even before the horrible terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, jobs in national security played a role in Indiana’s economy.

At the end of last year, Indiana had about 8,000 jobs in the sector of the economy known as national security. Indiana’s job count placed the state 18th among all states for jobs in that sector. Other states with similar numbers of national security jobs were Colorado, Illinois and Missouri. First place went to Virginia, with nearly 65,000 such jobs.

As an Indiana industry, national security is about the same size as mining in Indiana. All forms of coal and aggregate mining employ about the same number of Hoosiers as do national security jobs.

But in Indiana, national security jobs are highly concentrated in just two counties: Marion and Martin. Now, with more than 600,000 total jobs in Marion County, it’s not surprising that the county also has many jobs in national security. But Martin County is small. It ranks 70th out of Indiana’s 92 counties in total number of jobs. Yet as Chart 1 shows, 44% of all jobs in Martin County are in national security. Statewide, only three-tenths of one percent of all jobs are in that sector.

The explanation for the unusually high number of national security jobs in Martin County, of course, is that the U.S. Naval Ammunition Depot is located there, at Crane, Indiana. It provided about 3,000 jobs in the county last year. And they tended to be high paying jobs. Chart 2 shows the average annual wage reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for national security jobs in Martin County for the year 2000: almost $57,000. For all nonfarm jobs in all of Indiana, the average wage last year was $31,000.