The COVID-19 pandemic's blow to the labor force might not be as devastating to the Bloomington-Normal area as originally feared.
Patrick Hoban, president and CEO of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council, painted a picture of a community on the rebound during Thursday’s virtual B-N By The Numbers event.
“I might have made a joke last time about how everything would drop right before the election—and sure enough it did,” Hoban said. “Our unemployment is down compared to where it was.”
Hoban said, predictably, there was a huge spike in April as the pandemic started heating up. But the jobless rate has been consistently dropping since then.
“So the fear with unemployment, though dropping as fast-- re the people actually getting back in the workforce? Or are they just no longer qualified for unemployment? The good news is they're getting back in the workforce.”
Hoban said employment numbers for October were close to last year’s. The data suggest 92,000 people from Bloomington-Normal are currently employed. That’s compares with 93,000 at the same time last year. These figures include people who live in the community, regardless of where they work.
Hoban said he’s not sure how much the Tier 3 restrictions under the Restore Illinois plan will affect those numbers. November’s figures are not yet available.
“Our rates when compared to the rest of our surrounding region is one of the lowest for sure—down there with Champaign and below Illinois,” Hoban said. “But everybody is slowly but surely recovering, which is a good thing.”
Hoban said the EDC doesn’t place too much weight on the unemployment rate. Instead, it focuses on a metric it has some control over: the number of people who work in Bloomington-Normal.
“There (are) actually 33,000 people—close to 34,000—that come in every single day to work, and you can see those numbers are on the rise as well,” said Hoban, adding most of these metrics dipped substantially in the summertime. And certain industries were hurt more than others.
“It was a little unsettling when we started noticing some of our areas were much lower, you know, in the middle of those summer months compared to everybody else. Then we came to the realization that we’re a huge college town,” he said.
Once seasonally adjusted, Hoban said, things mostly flattened out. The number of people working in Bloomington-Normal is still below where it was last year. Hoban said the EDC is hopeful that will continue to rise with recently announced projects.
Hoban said the number of projects happening around McLean County is down about 50 from last year, but said Bloomington-Normal “actually blew investment out of the water.” He said that figure is up more than $100 million.
“These are great numbers for us, because they not only provide the long-term jobs, but also this type of investment creates a ton of temporary jobs in the construction field, which also ripples through our economy,” Hoban said.
Much of that investment is from Rivian. The company with the electric auto plant in Normal has put $215 million into the facility since it bought the place from a salvage auctioneer. Rivian has estimated that investment may double in the next year with more than 70 construction projects at the plant.
Hoban added mom-and-pop businesses — restaurants, especially — still need all the support they can get.
Strategic plan
Hoban also reported the EDC continues work on a strategic plan for improvements.
The plan lays out 15 initiatives with the goal of developing resources, businesses and investment. Some are fairly obvious: managing projects with companies like Rivian and Ferrero, retaining and growing existing businesses, and bringing new employers to the area.
But Hoban said the EDC will need all hands on deck to accomplish those goals, and efforts to attract new workers are currently lacking.
“Outside of the private sector, there wasn’t a lot of work being done on workforce attraction,” he said. “As we grow, with 2.6% unemployment before the pandemic hit and major expansions on the way, we need people.”
Hoban said the EDC will likely work with a consultant to figure out how to make that happen. He said the focus won’t just be on keeping college students in Bloomington-Normal after graduation, but also on getting people who grew up here to come back home.
“What a great time to do it, just being named the happiest place in America and all of the sudden, hopefully in the next year or two, our town’s going to smell like chocolate,” Hoban said.
That's a reference to Fererro's recent commitment to a $75 million expansion of its Bloomington candy plant that will begin making chocolate.
He said the effort must do more than try to keep college students in the community after they graduate. Business growth work also must recruit graduates or people who grew up in McLean County, but left for other opportunities to come back.
Other initiatives, Hoban said, include the BN Forward grant matching program. Hoban said the slew of grants available to help businesses and nonprofits through the pandemic—while helpful—also have been really confusing.
He said this new program will streamline the process of applying.
“The idea is that you fill out your company profile, you get all that information in there one time, and then as the state or locals or the feds release new programs, we send it to you because we already know you qualify and half the applications already filled out,” Hoban said.
Hoban said they’ll also look to create a rural development fellowship through Illinois State University to communities outside of Bloomington-Normal.
“We are a very, very large county, we're the size of Rhode Island with multiple municipalities. We want to partner with ISU and bring in a Stevenson Fellow. We're going to teach them economic development. And we're going to expand our services out into the rural communities.”
Hoban said they’re trying to do that already, but it’s tough with a staff of four.
The EDC’s strategic plan also includes creating three new committees: real estate and development, business and workforce. Theree also are metrics for assessing how well the commission reaches its goals.
For more details, view the full planhere.
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