Workforce
Transportation
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A shortage of drivers and crumbling pavement are undermining Wisconsin’s transportation reliability. The trucking industry faces a workforce gap – the U.S. was an estimated 80,000 truck drivers short in 2021 – leaving too few drivers to meet shipping needs. Compounding the problem, 43% of Wisconsin’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, which adds wear-and-tear costs (about $859 per motorist each year) and slows down deliveries. These issues create bottlenecks for Wisconsin’s export economy, which relies on moving roughly $567 billion worth of goods to and from the state annually. Fewer drivers and rough roads mean shipments of dairy, manufactured machinery, and other Wisconsin products face more delays on the way to market.
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Wisconsin’s exporters are grappling with rising costs and delays in getting their goods to global markets. In a 2022 survey, 91% of Wisconsin businesses reported supply-chain delays or other logistics challenges in the past year, and 93% of those firms saw higher costs as a result. Nearly half of affected companies even had to turn down customer orders or cancel product lines because of these supply snarls. Such chokepoints are dragging on a state export sector that shipped about $27.5 billion in goods in 2024. Manufacturers and farmers are paying more to ship everything from machinery to ginseng, and they’re waiting longer for critical parts – trends that ultimately hinder Wisconsin’s competitiveness abroad.
Other Workforce Challenges
Development & Training
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Many would-be skilled laborers in Wisconsin struggle to find or access the training programs that would give them in-demand skills. This is often due to barriers like cost, geography, and limited program capacity in rural areas. For instance, a recent initiative in northwestern Wisconsin had to invest $4 million to bring advanced manufacturing training into 11 rural counties, specifically targeting unemployed adults who previously lacked the skills to enter medium- and high-skilled jobs. Without better access to vocational and technical training, these potential workers remain stuck in low-wage roles and thousands of good-paying skilled trades positions go unfilled – a gap that weighs heavily on the state’s workforce.
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A disconnect between Wisconsin’s education pipeline and employers’ needs is fueling a skills mismatch, particularly in rural communities. Many technical colleges and training programs aren’t fully aligned with the hiring needs of local industries, resulting in graduates whose credentials don’t match available jobs. Statewide, over half (55%) of all jobs are “middle-skill” positions requiring more than high school but less than a four-year degree, yet only 48% of Wisconsin workers have had access to the skills training necessary to fill these positions. This gap leaves numerous positions unfilled or filled by under-qualified hires even as some residents with technical degrees can’t find work in their field. For example, a rural manufacturer might urgently need welders or machine operators, but nearby colleges may be graduating students in other trades or obsolete programs. The outcome is frustration on both sides – employers can’t find appropriately skilled labor, while job-seekers feel their training isn’t translating into employment – ultimately hampering economic growth in those communities.
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Wisconsin’s apprenticeship system isn’t yet reaching all the areas of critical labor need. Traditional apprenticeships have been heavily concentrated in construction, but other sectors and regions remain underserved. Notably, there are still no state-certified pre-apprenticeship programs in Wisconsin for healthcare occupations – a field with serious worker shortages – and very few such programs for manufacturing roles. Geographically, opportunities are uneven: the vast majority of pre-apprenticeship training over the past two years took place in just two counties (61% of completers were in Milwaukee County and 28% in Dane County). In fact, participants from 32 different counties had to commute into those urban centers for training due to a lack of local programs. These gaps mean that in many rural areas and high-need industries, apprenticeships aren’t yet filling the pipeline as intended. The state’s overall apprenticeship participation may be at record highs, but unless it expands into fields like healthcare and reaches more remote parts of Wisconsin, critical labor shortages will persist where apprenticeships aren’t accessible.
Supply & Retention
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Wisconsin is facing a demographic squeeze in its skilled trades and manufacturing workforce: as older employees retire, far too few young workers are stepping in to replace them. Even though participation in apprenticeships reached a record high of 17,500 individuals in 2024 (up 77% since 2013), employers across sectors still report severe labor shortages. In many industries this problem is intensifying as baby boomers retire and fewer young people are available to replace them. The result is an acute lack of fresh skilled labor, especially in manufacturing and the trades, which threatens to stall productivity and growth unless Wisconsin can attract or retain a new generation of talent.
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Manufacturing job losses in Wisconsin’s rural areas are leaving many longtime workers stranded without clear pathways to stable reemployment. Since 2019, rural counties in Wisconsin have collectively lost about 20,000 manufacturing jobs, and unlike urban centers, they have not recovered those jobs in the post-pandemic period. When a factory or mill in a small town closes, laid-off employees – often middle-aged with specialized skills – find that there are few, if any, comparable industries nearby. Limited local job options and scarce retraining programs mean these displaced workers frequently end up taking lower-wage service jobs, facing prolonged unemployment, or being forced to relocate away from their communities. In short, a plant closure in a rural region can devastate workers’ livelihoods, and current workforce systems are struggling to offer them a bridge to new stable careers.
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The steep decline of labor union participation in Wisconsin has weakened workers’ bargaining power and eroded some of the traditional pathways for training and advancement. In 2000, 17.8% of Wisconsin workers belonged to a union; by 2021, that fell to just 7.9% – the largest drop in unionization of any state over that period. This downturn is partly due to policy shifts (such as 2011’s Act 10 curbing public-sector unions and the 2015 right-to-work law) and the decades-long loss of union-heavy manufacturing jobs. As unions have receded, so have the apprenticeship and training programs they often supported. For example, in the construction industry today, non-union contractors make up 78% of the workforce but account for only 23% of the state’s construction apprentices, whereas union-affiliated programs (with just 22% of the workforce) train 77% of apprentices statewide. This imbalance means fewer workers outside of union programs are getting comprehensive on-the-job training. Moreover, the lack of union-negotiated wage standards has been linked to widening regional income inequality, as many workers no longer see the steady wage growth and skills development that union membership once provided. Overall, union decline has left a vacuum in both labor power and workforce training that has yet to be filled by alternative institutions.
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Wisconsin employers are not only struggling to hire skilled workers, they’re also having trouble keeping them. The absence of strong unions and clear vocational career ladders has contributed to a workforce retention problem, as many workers (especially younger ones) see limited long-term opportunity and move on. Surveys consistently show that a lack of career advancement is one of the top reasons employees quit their jobs. This is evident in Wisconsin’s tight labor market: with fewer union-secured career pathways or formal mentorship/apprenticeship programs, workers often hop between jobs or leave the state in search of more reliable advancement. This churn not only imposes costs on businesses (in constant rehiring and training) but also undermines the development of an experienced workforce. In short, many Wisconsin workers are eager for jobs that offer stability and growth – and if they can’t find those locally, retention suffers as they look elsewhere.
Broadband
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Wisconsin remains behind most states on internet access, ranking 45th nationwide for broadband availability. As of 2024, roughly 8% of Wisconsin households – largely in rural communities – still lack basic high-speed internet service. This digital divide isolates residents from online education, remote work opportunities, and civic life, with rural areas facing the greatest gaps (nearly 22% of rural Wisconsinites lack adequate broadband, far above urban rates). The consequences are economic as well: rural counties with low broadband usage lose about three businesses each year on average due to connectivity shortfalls.
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Neglected roads, water systems, and other basics can erode public confidence in local government. Nearly half of Americans hold an unfavorable view of their local government’s trustworthiness as of 2024, and a majority of local officials themselves expect public trust to decline further if services don’t improve. Research suggests that infrastructure investment can help rebuild trust – for example, one study found that improving a community’s roads, electricity, and water access boosted residents’ trust in their local officials by around 50%. Conversely, communities with potholes, failing utilities, and long-neglected projects often see lower engagement and faith in local institutions.
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Wisconsin’s electric grid faces growing stress from climate-driven extremes like ice storms and heatwaves. Roughly 80% of major U.S. power outages since 2000 have been caused by severe weather events, and such events are becoming more frequent. Regulators warn that an intense summer heatwave could lead to energy shortfalls in Wisconsin’s region, as peak electricity demand surges beyond normal capacity. At the same time, fierce winter storms are straining the system: a late-2022 blizzard (one of five major winter events in the past decade) and a June 2023 windstorm each knocked out power to tens of thousands of Wisconsin customers. Much of the grid was built for a milder climate, leaving it exposed as “once-in-a-century” storms now strike every few years.
Structural Barriers
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Several Wisconsin industries with high growth potential are hitting walls due to workforce and capacity shortfalls – a prime example being construction and logistics. Demand in these sectors is booming: the state needs tens of thousands of new housing units and is flush with infrastructure projects, and e-commerce has fueled a logistics expansion. Yet the construction industry is grappling with an “acute skilled labor shortage” even amid historic levels of work – firms can’t find enough trained workers to keep up with infrastructure, utility, and housing needs. Similarly, in trucking and warehousing (logistics), companies face major workforce challenges that curb their capacity. Long-haul trucking in particular suffers from extremely high turnover – on the order of 90% annual driver turnover for large fleets – because of difficult working conditions and stagnating wages. That means even if there are plenty of shipments, there aren’t enough steady drivers to carry them, creating supply bottlenecks. In both cases, these labor shortages act as a brake on growth: projects get delayed or scaled back, orders go unfilled, and Wisconsin’s economy doesn’t fully capitalize on the available opportunities. Unless workforce capacity is increased – through training, better wages, or productivity gains – industries like construction and logistics will continue to face major barriers in realizing their growth potential.
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Across many sectors of Wisconsin’s economy, wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of living, effectively stagnating workers’ purchasing power. On paper, average wages per worker in the state did grow about 21.1% from 2019 through 2023, slightly above the 19.2% inflation in that period. But that modest real gain isn’t being felt evenly: much of the workforce is still in jobs that pay at or below a livable wage, and rapid inflation in essentials has outstripped paychecks. A telling example is child care workers – by 2023 their median wage had climbed 51% from a decade earlier to $13.78 per hour, yet even at that rate a full-time child care worker with one child falls $11,400 short of covering basic yearly expenses in Wisconsin. In other words, even substantial wage increases in some low-paying jobs have not been enough to reach a true living wage. Overall, wage growth has been devastatingly slow for large segments of the workforce. When adjusted for housing, healthcare, and other essentials (which have seen sharp price hikes), many Wisconsin workers are effectively treading water or losing ground – a trend that not only squeezes household budgets but also makes the state less attractive to workers considering where to build their careers.