Indiana ranked 47th out of 51 (including D.C.) over the last year, its pay growth being a mere 5.2%. The national median, according to the report, is 6.2%.

News Release

INDIANA — New data has shown a stark contrast between the pay of Indiana business owners and their employees. In fact, the state nearly ranks dead last in terms of employee pay growth.

ADP recently released its National Employment Report, which uses the salaries of about 10 million individual workers over the past 12 months in order to measure the year-over-year annual pay growth everywhere in the nation. Indiana ranked 47th out of 51 (including D.C.) over the last year, its pay growth being a mere 5.2%. The national median, according to the report, is 6.2%.

Other bottom-ranking states include Iowa, Arkansas, New Jersey and Delaware.

By contrast, Indiana is ranked 13th in the nation by CNBC in its list of “America’s Top States for Doing Business.” According to CNBC’s methodology, employee wages, tax breaks and incentives all combine to give Indiana one of the lowest costs of doing business in the United States.

CNBC also graded Indiana as a D- in Life, Health and Inclusion, a D+ in Education, and a D+ in Workforce. It did, however, receive an A+ in cost of living and an A- in infrastructure. Contributing factors to these low grades include its limited protections against workplace discrimination and the second-lowest ranking in number of childcare facilities.

Other states low in the rankings of “worst states to live and work in” include Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida and Texas.

Experts from the Kelly School of Business at IU cite the great recession as a time period that hampered the growth of Indiana’s workforce and has continued to do so for several years since. They argue that the skills of the workforce aren’t developing to match what the economy needs, namely technical skills, engineering, science, math and technology.

While solving the wage problem will require serious longterm solutions, steps are being made in the right direction. This past session, Indiana lawmakers passed a bill that creates training opportunities in manufacturing for people with disabilities. Another bill was passed that creates workforce development programs to give career and support services to the adult students of state educational institutions.