One of the items I've been waiting for is to see how Wisconsin has been faring when it comes to gaining or losing talent, and just last week, the Census Bureau released their information on state-to-state migration for 2016.
Not surprisingly, states that border Wisconsin have the most number of people in this migration stat, along with the high-population warm-weather states that many retire to.
As you can see, Wisconsin gets twice as many people moving into the state from Illinois than we have going the other way, a net gain to the state of more than 15,700. Some of that Illinois stat makes sense just due to numbers - there are many more people within 60 miles of the Wisconsin-Illinois border in Illinois than in Wisconsin, not surprising that more would move here than the other way around. There is a lot of movement to and from Minnesota on both sides, with Minnesota gaining about 650 people last year. And then Wisconsin loses a lot of people to Florida and Arizona by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
Overall, Wisconsin reversed the trend that we saw in 2015, as nearly 5,000 more people moved into the state than left it.
Obviously, the main reason for the positive net migration is because of Illinois, who accounted for over ¼ of all migrants to Wisconsin. In fact, the Census Bureau says Wisconsin only gained 1,000 or more people from 2 other states – Indiana and Idaho (!). Meanwhile, we lost over 10,000 combined to Florida and Arizona, likely indicating retirees, which makes me wonder if those individuals are being replaced in both the work force and in their communities.
The Census stats don’t dig deeper into the individuals that do move, and doesn't go down into the county level, so we don't know what parts of the state they are moving to. And as reader Jake H alluded to in a recent comment, this seems particularly important when looking at the migration of Illinois and Minnesota.
The answer to the “Illinois” question is particular intriguing in figuring out the impact on our economy and our politics (commuters to jobs in Chicago? Boomer retirees going up North to "escape" the FIBs' fiscal mess? "THOSE PEOPLE" heading into Wisconsin's larger cities?). Minnesota works the other way – some have hinted here that some of the sizable population growth in western Wisconsin is because the Michele Bachmann crowd sees the reddening Wisconsin as more suited to what they like (we’ll find out more in the upcoming State Senate election out there). By contrast, younger professionals may prefer opportunities and lifestyle in the Twin Cities over what we have in Wisconsin.
And the trend of Wisconsinites moving south and west for warmer weather and better jobs (both within the state and outside of it) may increase the population decline of a lot of areas that are already graying and hurting. Keep an eye on that as we see new population and jobs figures in the coming year.
And those demographic problems make it all the more vital to figure out what Wisconsin can do to encourage people to come into the state to replace those older individuals. Granted, it's cool that Wisconsin is now getting Portillo's, but I don't think relying on escapees from Illinois is a viable long-term economic strategy for a place with 5-month winters, especially if we don't gain much from the rest of the Midwest. Just sayin'.
Great post and it's definitely a topic that is fun to think deeply about as there are so many possibilities depending on what people might be moving from place to place for as well as what businesses are moving across borders and for what reason.
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting that Kwik Trip is probably creating nearly 1000 jobs between acquired store locations additional jobs, expanded food facilities and jobs in La Crosse and unlike Foxx Con, only received around 21 million in aid vs billions. While it is true the jobs aren't as sought after as high tech jobs, Kwik Trip's loyalty to Wisconsin is fairly obvious as I looked over the last few months of articles. The real question in the coming months is, are the high tech manufacturing jobs worth paying the premium price for to put the state on the map, or is investment in already loyal local companies in a state worth helping out to a greater extent to get the best financial results. Local companies can also offer some manufacturing jobs and high tech jobs but not as many so it really becomes a question of which investment has the greatest benefit to the most people/areas. Now that the deal is gone through, we'll get to see how it plays out and I'm looking forward to watching which investments have the largest pay off in the end.
One thought on most of the northern WI counties that I have written to the state about is trying to get an actual freeway from Fargo ND to the Mackinac bridge connecting the Upper peninsula along the US 2 roadway south of Superior connecting to I-35(and preferably continuing westward to Fargo. Upgrading this route is absolutely critical to breathing new life into many of the northern MN, WI, and MI counties. When state lines were drawn, apparently the governments original plan was to split off northern MN, WI and MI into their own state and the capital would have been made by combining Duluth/Superior into one larger city. To this day, I and many others feel this should still be done. The highest levels of poverty and poorest road systems in all three states can be found in this area. It is a region that needs more local representation to fight for local priorities. The state capitols of all three states are at the opposite ends of all three existing states. If it were up to me, I would simply draw the dividing line at the same level as the north/south Dakota line to the existing upper peninsula boundary at that level and then leave the rest of the Michigan/Wisconsin boundary as is. I would also redraw the Minnesota/Iowa border from the southernmost South Dakota to Wisconsin level because north Iowa is more dependent on Minnesota than it is on Iowa in my personal opinion and north Iowa still struggles with poverty issues just like the northern portions of the other states. The size of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa at that point would be about equal with the new state being larger in size but similar in population to the others. The only way to make it happen now would be to have president create an executive order and try to get the supreme court to uphold the change. In the end, I think it would fix a lot of the issues that we have in the region. The reason the additional state wasn't created was that Texas never split again as expected, so the new northern state was never created. The government at the time was trying to keep the country "balanced" between north and south. Either way though, a northern East/West freeway would really help revive the struggling economies in all three states so I hope more people write to the US and state DOT's about fixing the problem or at least trying to make as many improvements to the existing route as possible. I encourage the reader's here to consider e-mailing or writing to push for this important route to try to help all these counties and communities economically. I feel for all these areas each time I drive through and far more needs to be done to help save them from economic failure.