NEWS BLIPS
WSBT Reports on The Fate of The RV Industry in Elkhart
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through WSBT22's website.
ELKHART COUNTY, Ind. — WSBT discusses the growth of the RV industry in Elkhart County and how long it can last. Elkhart County has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, just 2.2 percent. Summer is in full swing in downtown Elkhart. It's known as the city with a heart-- but if downtown is the heart, what keeps it pumping are the hundreds of RV factories throughout the county.
The workforce depends on the RV industry. Flashback to 2008, when things went bad in the economy, one luxury item people stopped buying was RVs. Now that industry is back, though the question remains, will it continue to boom or bust? About 47,000 people in Elkhart County are tied to RVs. One of those people deeply ingrained in the industry is Ian Roberts, employee at Keystone RV since 2002. Another is Jason Lippert, the CEO of Lippert Components. "In a little over a year (since 2008), industry sales dropped 60-percent," says Lippert. "We had to make a lot of tough decisions and we had to keep the company healthy so we could employ the amount of team members we had at the end of the day." Around 2010, the RV industry began to pick up again. In the years since the recession, the factories have gotten bigger, the demand higher and the amount of workers has grown. "It's unclear when the next economic downturn will hit, but what is agreed upon is that Elkhart County won't suffer the same way it did," says WSBT writer Jessi Schultz.
For the full article on WSBT 22, click here.