Indiana is a U.S. state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Area. With 6,483,802 inhabitants, Indiana is ranked 16th in population density and 15th in population. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is the smallest state in the continental US west of the Appalachian Mountains. Its largest and capital city is Indianapolis, the second largest of any state capital and largest state capital east of the Mississippi River.
For thousands of years, varying cultures of indigenous peoples and historic Native Americans colonized the state of Indiana long before it became a territory. Angel Mounds State Historic Site, amongst the best preserved ancient earthwork mound sites within the nation, can be found within Southwestern Indiana near Evansville.
The inhabitants of the state are known as "Hoosiers." The origin is hypothesized to come from "Hoosier" originating from a frontier greeting, a corruption of "Who's here?" The state's name translates to "Land of the Indians," or simply "Indian Land." This name dates back to at least the 1760s but was first applied to the region by the United States Congress when the Indiana Territory was incorporated in 1800, separating it from the Northwest Territory.
The workforce of Indiana was 3,084,100 in 2000, helping to provide a total gross state product of $275.7 billion. A large percentage of this output comes in the form of manufacturing. The northwest area of Indiana called the Calumet area is the largest steel producing region in the United States Indiana's other manufactures comprise medical devices and pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment, automobiles, transportation equipment, chemical products, rubber, petroleum and factory machinery and coal products.
Compared to its Rust Belt neighbors, Indiana's and its reliance on manufacturing has not seen the steep declines in manufacturing. Certain factors in the existing labor market seem to supply the explanation. First, a lot of the heavy manufacturing, such as steel and industrial machinery, requires highly skilled labor, and firms are usually willing to locate where hard-to-train skills exist already. Next, Indiana's work force is located mainly within medium-sized and smaller cities rather than in very large and expensive metropolises. This makes it possible for firms to offer somewhat lower salary for these skills than would typically be paid. Companies normally see within Indiana a possibility to obtain higher than average skills at lower than average salary.
The state of Indiana sits within the U.S. Corn Belt and Grain Belt. Making use of a feedlot-style system, the state raises corn to fatten hogs and cattle. Another major cash crop is corn and soybeans. The big urban centres of Indianapolis and nearby Chicago help to assure that specialty horticulture, dairying and egg production happen. Other crops consist of melons, tomatoes, grapes, mint, popping corn, and tobacco within the southern counties. Most of the original land was not prairie and had to be cleared of deciduous trees. Numerous parcels of forest remain and support a furniture-making sector within the southern part of the state.