Under pressure to comply with new U.S. clean-air rules, the region's coal-dependent power sector will generate demand for skilled craft labor as it retrofits coal-fired powerplants with emission controls or retires and replaces them with gas turbines.

In southern Indiana, several emission-control projects, as well as $2.8 billion in planned fertilizer plants, will begin in the next few years. These projects could hike craft-labor demand by 140%.

IIR forecasts a utilization rate over 90% for crane operators in the Evansville area in 2014 and 2015.

A building-trades spokesman in Washington, D.C., says the labor market will not be overstressed.

"Toledo is a 1½-hour drive from Detroit and about two hours from Cleveland and can draw on those labor markets," he says. "Given that the Midwest has been in a construction recession for several years, there is substantial labor supply available."

Recent apprenticeship enrollments have been "slack," he adds, leaving ample capacity to train pipefitters, boilermakers and other skilled crafts.