Friday, September 23, 2022

Wisconsin needs people! And voting for regressive GOPs won't bring them here

Wanted to touch on a report that Forward Analytics put out this week saying that Wisconsin needs to get more people to come here!

This report noted that Wisconsin has been consistently losing younger workers to other states, a trend that picked up steam in the 2010s. And they haven't made up the difference when it comes to attracting younger workers to come here.
Of 626,000 millennials who lived in Wisconsin at age 16, 132,000 (21%) lived in another state at age 26. Those who left were partially replaced by 89,000 millennials who moved here from other states. On net, Wisconsin shed 43,000 people from this important age group.

“Bright lights, big city” may best describe the reason many left. Only 37% of those who left moved to a state bordering Wisconsin. Of those [37%], nearly 70% migrated to either Minneapolis (42%), Chicago (26%), or Detroit (2%), the three largest metro areas in the Midwest.
But the state was more successful in getting the next older generation of workers to come here, to the point that we started to gain in the last half of the decade.
During 2017-2020, the state had a net inflow of 1,128 families from [the 26-54] cohort, with 760 of those families coming here in 2020. The gains over these years do not make up for the losses in prior years. However, the trend shows the state heading in the right direction. Wisconsin needs to continue to attract this population as they will be critical to maintaining the state’s workforce over the next decade.
Not surprisingly, most of those families that were coming and going didn't end up going very far away,.
Minnesota and Illinois were the most popular destinations for Wisconsin families. More than 65,000 (14%) families that left the state opted for Minnesota and more than 62,000 (13%) chose Illinois. Michigan (19,760) and Iowa (12,164) attracted smaller numbers of Wisconsin families.

The geographic pattern of those moving to Wisconsin was a bit different. Compared to those leaving, a greater percentage came from neighboring states (43% vs. 33%). Minnesota and Illinois were the biggest source of families, but their order was reversed from the out-migration pattern. Responsible for more than one in five incoming families, Illinois (89,606) was the largest source of families moving here. Another 61,757 families came from Minnesota. Fewer families moved from Michigan (21,752) or Iowa (13,674).
That’s not overly surprising to see more out-migration from Illinois than Minnesota - there are more people in Chicago than the Twin Cities, so why wouldn’t there be more families coming to Wis from Ill. than Minn? I also find it positive to see Wisconsin get a net gain from Michigan and Iowa, although those numbers are comparatively small.

Another unsurprising finding by Forward Analytics is that many of the remaining movers from Wisconsin over the next decade headed south.
Like most Midwestern states, Wisconsin lost a large number of families to warmer locations in the Sunbelt. Of the 303,979 families that left Wisconsin and left the region (that is, out of Wisconsin but not to a border state) more than 171,000 (57%) moved to the Sunbelt. Four of those Sunbelt states —Florida, Texas, California, and Arizona—attracted 38% of the Wisconsin families that departed the Midwest. Florida accounted for 13% of those leaving the region, making it the favorite destination for these families. Texas attracted 10% of such families while California attracted 9% and Arizona 7%.
The other top 5 destination for Wisconsinites moving to a non-bordering state was Colorado, or as I call it, “bizarro Wisconsin.”

There’s another interesting stat that the Forward Analytics study includes, which indicates that many Sconnies move back home after making their way in bigger metros to start their careers.

The six states with the largest positive differential are states that attracted the largest numbers of young millennials based on findings from the Harvard/Census study discussed in the previous section. Half of this young cohort moved to these six states.

Many, if not most, of these young movers would show up in the IRS data as single filers. This would help explain the relatively small average family size of those leaving Wisconsin for these states. If many of those moving to Wisconsin are married and possibly starting families, the average family size moving here would be much larger. Simply put, the data are consistent with young families moving from these states to Wisconsin. Some may be former Wisconsinites returning to raise their families.
Kristin Brey of the As Goes Wisconsin show also saw the Forward Analytics report, and put the question to her Twitter followers as to how Wisconsin can get more people to come here (or come back here, as Brey herself did from California in her mid-30s).

These two responses sounded a common refrain among the 34 responses.

You know what’s NOT going to make people want to move themselves and their families back to Wisconsin? A reputation of being OK with garbage like this.

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Then again, maybe this garbage is part of the GOP's bigger plan for getting an edge in a battleground state like Wisconsin. And has been for several years.

As a former leader of the Wisconsin Dems put it Friday, this November is really a test of the state’s decency.

This state is either going to vote for Barnes and Evers, and show that it wants to be a competitive place in the 21st Century, or we’ve given up, and are going to go along with regressives and oligarchs.

We’d better not fail the test. The work force and future entrepreneurs are watching.
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