Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's County Profiles: Future Projections

Tuesday, July 11th, 2023 -- 10:00 AM

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) has published updated workforce profiles for Wisconsin's 72 counties.

Each profile provides county-level information, analysis, and data to help employers, job seekers, economic developers, and other workforce partners make decisions related to the labor market economy. Every two years, DWD's Office of Economic Advisors compiles and distills local data on all 72 counties into individual county workforce profiles.

The 2023 profiles cover Wisconsin's historic bounce-back from the COVID-19 pandemic and feature:

• Updated U.S. Census data and changing demographics, including figures for major municipalities;
• Employment by 11 industry sectors, with payroll totals and percentages;
• Occupational patterns within industries;
• Unemployment and labor force participation rates;
• Barriers to employment;
• And average wages.

While studying past trends is useful, DWD also produces projections of industry and occupation employment into the future including in Clark County. The employment projections in this profile are for the nine-county West Central Wisconsin Workforce Development Area, are produced every two years, and follow the Bureau of Labor Statistics methodology.

The current methodology accounts for different types of changes: growth, labor force exits, and occupational transfers. These categories are helpful when analyzing occupational change. Transfers include events like changing careers, being promoted to management, or completing a retraining program.

The West Central region includes more than just Clark County, which accounts for about 6% of employment in the region. However, employment and economic dynamics are similar enough throughout the region to comment on general trends.

Total industry employment is expected to grow by about 8%, or almost 17,000 workers from 2020 to 2030. Most industries are expected to grow over this period, though this projection only forecasts levels of filled positions rather than potential demand.

This further illustrates the issues associated with the aging population. Job growth is expected to continue, despite declines in labor force levels. Employers find it difficult to replace workers even if overall employment in the industry declines. Businesses already face difficulty replacing retirees' positions, and this difficulty will expand to filling new openings.

This could constrain job growth by limiting expansion. Although solutions will be different for each business, they will likely include a combination of talent pipeline development, utilization of worker training grants, increased focus on talent attraction and retention, formation of business and industry alliances, engagement of under-utilized populations, increased automation, and retention of retirees in non-conventional work arrangements.

While industry projections have their uses, occupational projections are more applicable. Projections indicate growth in most sectors, supporting the narrative of long-range stability in many of west central Wisconsin's largest industries.

However, given the 2020 base year for this round of projections, we do see that the proportions reflect these unique conditions rather than the expected trend. The 2020 pandemic caused a large drop in employment in the base year. As a result, much of the projected growth to 2030 is recovery.

Some occupations that typically have strong projected growth rates, such as nursing, did not show as much growth in this round if they did not have a significant decline in 2020 and subsequent recovery.

In another example of 2020 impacts, growth in transportation and material moving occupations is far above past projections, highlighting the increase in online shopping trends during the pandemic.

Recent tech layoffs suggest shopping may be returning to pre-pandemic trends, though, which means the growth in transportation and material moving occupations might not occur as projected.

The other trend illustrated is that of labor constraints as openings created due to replacement needs far outnumber those generated by new growth in the region. Transfers are the largest component of these replacements, reflecting the increased labor market churn in which there are increased opportunities due to talent shortages.

Labor force exits is the other component, which reflects continued baby boomer retirement. These challenges reemphasize the importance of efforts to create, attract, and retain Wisconsin's workforce and prioritize availability and skill sets of young workers.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.