FOR MMC

Wisconsin’s economy rebounded from the pandemic, the number of workers employed in the state exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time in 2023, reaching a record high. Total employment averaged just over 2.9 million that year, which was 1.2% higher than in 2019.

The recovery has been uneven geographically, however, with fewer than half of the state’s counties reaching pre-pandemic employment levels in 2023 including many where jobs were growing in the years leading up to the pandemic. The improvement also has been inconsistent across the economy, with most sectors having fully rebounded by 2023 but several remaining down by thousands of jobs. Those include manufacturing, which plays an outsized role in the state’s economy and which added jobs nationally while declining in Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s overall pace of job growth between 2019 and 2023 also lagged the national rate of 3.4%.

These are among the key takeaways from our analysis of newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages – the most accurate employment data available. To understand the prior trajectory of Wisconsin’s job market and changes that have occurred since the onset of the pandemic, we analyzed data from 2015 to 2023, using 2019 as our pre-pandemic baseline.

Many Counties Still Recovering

A majority of Wisconsin’s 72 counties – 42, or 58% — still averaged lower total employment in 2023 than in 2019. In many cases, employment was growing in the years preceding the pandemic, meaning the more recent losses reversed previous momentum. Indeed, 31 of those 42 counties added jobs between 2015 and 2019 before their more recent declines, including five of the state’s 10 most populous counties (Milwaukee, Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago, and Marathon).

Still, as we have discussed in previous research, Wisconsin’s aging population, low birth rate, and weak net migration figures have resulted in a shrinking working-age population, which could affect the state’s ability to attract and retain employers. In fact, Census data show that between 2010 and 2023, the state’s population in their prime working years (ages 25 to 54) declined by over 133,000 or 5.8%, while nationally, that population grew 2.8%. State projections suggest that

Wisconsin’s working-age population will remain flat well into the future.

Conclusion

Considering the severity of the disruption the pandemic inflicted on society and the economy, Wisconsin’s jobs picture is relatively bright overall, with higher total employment in 2023 than ever before, an unemployment rate below the national average, and a strong recovery even in some of the hardest hit sectors such as arts, entertainment, and recreation. Wages also have risen, with average wages per employee increasing 21.1% in the state between 2019 and 2023, slightly outpacing inflation of 19.2%. Yet a closer look reveals an uneven return of jobs across the state, with employment in more than half of Wisconsin counties still lower in 2023 than 2019 and some sectors including manufacturing registering sizable job declines despite national growth. In many Wisconsin counties and some economic sectors, recent job losses erased at least some of the gains realized in the years immediately preceding the pandemic.

Given the manufacturing sector’s substantial contributions to Wisconsin’s economy, including large numbers of relatively good paying jobs and the attraction of out-of-state investments and sales, the lack of employment recovery in that sector may be cause for concern. On the other hand, the state’s strong overall employment and wage growth figures perhaps suggest that our economy is diversifying, which could be a strength if it means greater resilience during future economic downturns.

In the short term, Wisconsin has plenty of economic news to celebrate, but its long-standing challenges stemming from an aging population and shrinking labor pool remain. As with the state’s spotty job recovery, these challenges likely will play out in an uneven manner, placing greater stress on certain communities and industries than others.