INDIANAPOLIS | Indiana lost nearly 5,800 jobs in October, most of them as the state's recreational vehicle and automotive industries continued shedding jobs or shuttering factories amid the nation's mounting economic woes.
Preliminary numbers released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Indiana's October job losses pushed the state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to 6.4 percent, up from 6.2 percent in September.
Indiana's unemployment rate is now at its highest level since February 1987, although the state's jobless rate also touched 6.4 percent in August, said Gary Abel, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
Abel said October's job losses were heaviest in areas of the state with RV or automotive plants reeling from the nation's credit crunch, high fuel prices and lower consumer spending.
The RV industry's woes have continued into November, including RV maker Jayco Corp.'s recent announcement that it would close its northeastern Indiana Starcraft trailer plant, leaving 244 workers in the town of Topeka out of work.
"What we're seeing primarily is the RV industry with a little bit of the automotive thrown in. It's a reflection of what's going on globally," Abel said.
Indiana's October jobless rate remained below the national rate, which rose to 6.5 percent.
Among the state's top 14 metropolitan areas, only four had unemployment rates higher than the national average and all of those -- Elkhart-Goshen, Kokomo, Anderson and South Bend -- have large RV or automotive presence, Abel said.
Indiana was among 38 states and the District of Columbia that lost jobs last month, but the state's unemployment rate was the lowest of its neighboring states.
Michigan's October unemployment rate was 9.3 percent, Ohio and Illinois both had 7.3 percent jobless rates and Kentucky's unemployment rate was 6.8 percent.
Although government statistics put Indiana's jobless rate below the national average, those statistics conceal the large number of Hoosiers who are hurting financially, said Pam Altmeyer, president and CEO of Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, the state's largest food bank.
She said the numbers don't take into account Hoosiers who've turned to charities for help after they exhausted their unemployment benefits or became discouraged in their job searches.
Altmeyer said more parents of working class families are working more than one job to make ends meet, and those numbers are reflected in the state's official employment rate as separate jobs.
"Those people with multiple jobs are great for the employment rate, but it's absolutely horrible for families that are trying to survive," she said. "Many families have breadwinners with multiple jobs and those jobs just don't pay a living wage and they don't have benefits."
Altmeyer said her group, which provides food to about 400 central Indiana hunger-relief charities, has seen a "dramatic" increase in food requests over the past year and a half.
She has been urging those aid agencies to expand their service hours into the evening and weekends to make sure that people who work more than one job can get the food they need.
Among the Hoosiers feeling the pinch is 60-year-old Skip Surguine, who lost his job as a telemarketer about a year ago and now survives on disability checks for his diabetes-related complications.
Surguine recently found himself without enough money to buy groceries after he moved from the condo he could no longer afford in Carmel, an Indianapolis suburb, to a rental apartment and his moving fees were $750 -- more than twice what he had anticipated.
He ended up turning to a local police department that offers food vouchers for citizens in need and got a $25 voucher that he spent on beef, poultry and other groceries.
"I stocked up on the best protein sources I could get and I've been kind of able to nurse that along for two weeks now. But I'm just scraping by," he said.
