Indianapolis, the fourth-strongest labor market in The Wall Street Journal's rankings of big metros, offered different strengths. It attracted and retained jobs seekers with a mix of industries that are buttressed against the pandemic. It is a state capital, home to drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. and has a manufacturing base, including Allison Transmission Inc. Central Indiana also has a growing logistics and warehousing industry, including one of the country's largest FedEx Corp. hubs, which increased in importance as more consumers shifted to online shopping.
One local employer that expanded in the past year was ClusterTruck, a delivery-only restaurant that added three new kitchens in the Indianapolis suburbs and hired about a dozen new staff members for each. The company even had to hire two full-time recruiters to manage its growth. New employees include line cooks, software engineers and project managers, some of which came from out of state, said ClusterTruck Chief Executive Chris Baggott.
ClusterTruck attributed its growth to new customers during the pandemic who ordered everything from pad thai to churros to eat at home. The company recently partnered with Kroger Co., running kitchens out of two of the grocery store's locations in a suburb of Indianapolis and Dublin, Ohio, and Mr. Baggott said he hopes to expand the partnership this year.
Indianapolis isn't viewed, nationally, as a tech hotbed or a place with a thriving dining or nightlife scene. But Mr. Baggott said it has been a good location to start a business.
"It's a great place to test and experiment," he said, in part because "it looks like any place else...I know this will work in San Francisco. But, if I started in San Francisco, I'm not so sure it would work in Indianapolis."
Not all Midwest cities are showing similar resilience. Cleveland and Detroit came at the bottom of the Journal's rankings, near where they placed before the pandemic. That reflected longer-run challenges in both places, including a decadeslong decline in manufacturing jobs and loss of higher-skilled labor to other parts of the country.
Wheeling, W.Va., was the weakest market among smaller metros. It had among the largest decreases in wages as well as loss of jobs and job seekers. Energy and tourism, two important industries for the area, both suffered declines in 2020.
A shining light of recovery
The cities that fell the hardest in 2020 were tourist centers such as Orlando, Fla. It went from having one of the hottest job markets in 2019, ranking eighth, to among the weakest last year, falling to No. 47.
"The disproportionate and devastating impact that the pandemic had on tourism really hit the region's economy hard," said Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Forecasting. Las Vegas and Miami were other tourist-focused cities that tumbled.
Still, Mr. Snaith said he thinks the region will see a relatively speedy recovery as widespread vaccinations and pent-up demand from people stuck at home fuels a rebound in tourism. The number of nonfarm employees in the Orlando metro area edged up in February, the most recent data available, but remained 12.5% below year-ago levels, according to the Labor Department. Restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues helped drive strong national employment growth in March.
Major theme parks in the Orlando area reopened last summer, with restrictions such as capacity limits and face coverings for most guests. On a February earnings call, Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Chapek said demand at the company's parks has been strong.
Sonja Flowers was called back to her job as a restaurant server at Walt Disney World in March, a year after she was first furloughed. Ms. Flowers, 62, said she's happy to be back at work but the time away will likely require her to push back her retirement plans.
"For me personally, I'm treading water," Ms. Flowers said. "I was at a point in my life when I was able to start saving for retirement. Now I'm going to have to work a little longer."
Marco Manzie, president of Paramount Hospitality Management, which runs five hotel properties in Orlando, said he is seeing demand pick up. Bookings rose sharply around the last two weeks of December, when Mr. Manzie said the company's hotels surpassed 85% occupancy. After an early winter slowdown, bookings look strong for April and May.
"I think we're going to be surprised this year," Mr. Manzie said. "We're finally taking a step back and saying, 'Hey, we see a real shining light of recovery here.'"
-- Anthony DeBarros contributed to this article.
Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
04-09-21 0544ET
