Younger workers leaving Fitzwalkerstan make our demographics problem even worse

Dale Knapp of Forward Analytics produced a study for the Wisconsin Counties Association that reiterates Wisconsin’s demographic concerns, which are limiting our state’s ability to grow.

As the summary sheet for the study notes, Wisconsin used to benefit from younger people moving in, which allowed its workforce to expand in the 1990s and early 2000s. That reversed with the onset of the Great Recession, sped up in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, and is now at the point that the state finds itself with more older workers than younger ones.

For example, in 1990, Wisconsin had 1.75 residents under 16 for each resident 50 to 64 years of age, and the state’s workforce expanded almost 17% over 15 years. By 2000, this ratio had fallen to 1.42 young people per resident near retirement, and the labor force expanded just 4.1% during 2000-15. At 0.87 in 2017, this long-term indicator is pointing to a shrinking labor pool over the next 15 years.

The analytics group gives an example of how this works in the full report, and why Wisconsin has such a problem today.

Before delving into the narrow age groups, it is helpful to take a broad look at the migration of those who were 15 to 59 years old in 2010, compared to those of similar ages in prior years. In 2010, Wisconsin had 3.49 million residents who were 15 to 59 years of age. Five years later, it had 3.41 million residents ages 20 to 64. In other words, the size of this critical workforce cohort declined by 78,571 people. There were approximately 47,618 deaths among this group. The remaining decline of 30,953 people was a net out-migration of residents (see Figure 3).

This decline is similar to 2005-2010, but is a major shift from 20 years earlier. During 1990-1995, a similarly-aged cohort grew by 91,850 due to net in-migration from other states or countries. During 2000-2005, the state also added to this group, though the number was less than 17,000.

Wisconsin has generally lost people in the post-college graduate ages of 25-29, but in the recent past, they would have a sizable group of people move back to the state in their 30s and 40s, often due to advantages Wisconsin had over other places such as a lower cost of living and higher quality of life (yours truly included).

That’s not happening so much anymore, especially among people that were aged 25-34 at the start of a 5-year period. In addition, more Gen Xers are moving out than moving in.

Over the most recent five years studied, Wisconsin experienced a net in-migration of fewer than 3,000 among this (25-34) group.

A similar downward trend has occurred with those 35 to 49 years of age, many of whom are also working and raising families. Significant in-migration in the early 1990s turned to fewer gains during both 2000-2005 and 2005-2010 (see Figure 8).

However, while Wisconsin continued to add to the 25 to 34 year old cohort during 2010-2015, it lost to other states or countries more than 12,000 of those who were 35 to 49 years of age in 2010.

Even worse, while Wisconsin gained between 42,600 and more than 69,000 children in each 5 year period between 1990 and 2010, that number plummeted to less than 10,000 between 2010 and 2015. I’m sure the fact that this change happened after Act 10 and other efforts to eradicate public education in Wisconsin were put in place is pure coincidence (the lousy economy for young people also didn’t help).

What the Forward Analytics study shows is that unless Wisconsin changes its path and starts getting younger workers to want to come here, this state will be stagnant at best because of these demographic problems. And when people under 40 saw this on Election Night 2016, it didn’t help.

It’s time to Make Wisconsin Great Again – by investing in education and other types of quality of life, paying good wages for good jobs, instead of the lowest manufacturing wages in the Midwest. And returning to our pre-Walker tradition of clean government and not tolerating idiotic, destructive politicians.

Some of this restoration started with the election of Tony Evers and statewide slate of Dems last November, but with the gerrymandered Legislature determined to keep Wisconsin in a Koched-up direction, and an anti-Wisconsin Tax Scam in place from DC, there may only be so much that can be done before 2020. So many areas of the state are likely to continue to shed sizable amounts of working-age people in the next 2 years, as shown by the dark purple in this map.

But with the new decade of the 2020s comes a new opportunity, and much of it will be related to whether Wisconsin can erase the red stain that has marked it for much of the 2010s. It’s a stain that a lot of people are choosing not to be a part of, especially outside of progressive areas of the state and especially with younger workers. Turning the state back to progressive blue wouldn’t just help the frame of mind of people that live in the few areas that are growing, but also for the many parts of the state that have been dying in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan and now can’t find anyone to work what few decent jobs that are left.