Young People Leaving Wisconsin

Friday, February 17th, 2023 -- 10:01 AM

(By Joe Schulz, Wisconsin Public Radio) Twenty-five-year-old Matt Gill grew up in the Fox Valley.

According to Joe Schulz with Wisconsin Public Radio, after a stint at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, he left Wisconsin last June. "The reason I left is because I started working remotely after COVID, and my girlfriend got a job in Utah," he said. "We will probably come back in the future to be closer to our family, but it depends on how her career goes."

Gill works in information technology, or IT, while his girlfriend is a naturalist educator at a nature center in Utah. But their story isn’t unique. Over the last decade, the state lost 106,000 people under the age of 26, according to a recent report by Forward Analytics, the research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association.

If Wisconsin doesn't improve efforts to attract and retain young people, its labor shortage could get worse by the end of the decade, but there’s no simple solution to address the issue. And, if demographic trends continue, the state’s working-age population could shrink by about 130,000 people by 2030, the report found.

"Attracting and retaining these young people is critical for Wisconsin," said Dale Knapp, director of Forward Analytics, in a statement last September. "Attracting and retaining them would not only grow the current workforce, it would also help long term as many of these young adults will soon be starting a family and raising the next generation of workers."

Doing so, however, requires a combination of promoting IT jobs already in the state, recruiting industries young people want to work in and embracing the state’s growing diversity, according to local government officials, researchers and regional economic development organizations.

Dave Egan-Robertson, a demographer for the UW-Madison’s Applied Population Lab, said Wisconsin has traditionally been an importer of high school graduates and an exporter of college graduates. He said the state generally sees a net gain in people between 15 and 19, but experiences a net loss of individuals between 20 and 24.

"Once young people finish college, they're attracted to slightly larger metro areas," Egan-Robertson said. "A lot go to Minneapolis/St. Paul area, (some) like to go to Chicago (and) some go even further afield. It's just sort of part of the life course of young people."

Wisconsin’s image as a rural, agrarian state also could be playing a role in its struggles to appeal to young people, wrote Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, in a 2016 trade publication.

While Bauer said the state should be proud of its agriculture sector, he argued it needs to rebrand itself to better reflect its diverse economy.

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