By Timothy Aeppel Reuters

ELKHART, Ind., April 7 (Reuters) – What happens when Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) plops over 1,000 new jobs in one of the hottest blue-collar job markets in the country?

The RV Capital of the World is about to find out.

Like many other manufacturing hubs around the United States, this patch of northern Indiana about 100 miles (161 km) east of Chicago has struggled to fill factory jobs throughout the pandemic, due in large part to an unprecedented boom in the recreational vehicle industry that dominates the local economy.

New U.S. manufacturing jobs were minted at a rate of about 32,000 a month over the past year – the swiftest clip in more than a quarter century – but the regional variations are sizable. Around Elkhart, whose population is about 52,000, the share of the total workforce that is employed in factories and manufacturing is 51.5%, compared with a share of 8% nationally, according to the Labor Department.

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