Wisconsin's brain drain problem could be solved if Wis businesses would pay up

Recently, the Wisconsin Policy Forum released a report on our state's “brain drain” problem.

Based on our analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, we estimate that 59.8% of Wisconsin-born adults aged 31 to 40 who now live in another state have a bachelor’s degree or higher. In contrast, an estimated 45.2% of adults in that age group who were born in another state but now live in Wisconsin hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, a gap of 14.6 percentage points…. We refer to this gap as “net brain drain.”

Wisconsin’s net brain drain ranks second nationally, behind only North Dakota (see Figure 1 on page 1). This is a slight improvement from 2009, when Wisconsin’s net brain drain (-15.3 percentage points) was the highest in the nation. Most other Midwestern states have experienced similarly high rates of net brain drain, with the exception of Illinois, which stands out as the region’s only net “brain‑gain” state (+10.4 points). Nationally, a few other states with strong metropolitan hubs — such as Virginia (+5.8 points) in the Southeast and Colorado (+8.2) and Utah (+1.0) in the West — defy regional brain‑drain trends….

In some ways, Wisconsin is a victim of its own success, as the Policy Forum paper notes that Wisconsin raises a larger number of college graduates than most states, but then we get a sizable amount of them who leave.

A state’s educational baseline affects the impact of net brain drain. Among U.S.-born adults aged 31 to 40, Wisconsin starts from a relatively strong position; 43.4% of Wisconsin‑born adults in this group hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, which is above the national average of 40.6% and ranks 16th nationally (see Figure 3). In contrast, several other high brain‑drain states begin from a much lower baseline; for example, only 38.0% of 31- to 40-year-old Indiana natives hold bachelor’s degrees.

So even with a relatively high number of college-educated natives leaving the state, Wisconsin still keeps enough of our graduates to not have a low education level of the workforce overall.

Although Indiana’s net brain drain rate (–11.5 percentage points) is slightly better than Wisconsin’s (– 14.6 points), our state also fares better when looking at the educational attainment of current residents within this same age range. Both states see similar gaps in educational attainment between their birth cohorts and current residents (–4.4 points versus –3.7), but Wisconsin’s stronger starting point results in a more educated resident population. Wisconsin ranks 26th nationally at 39.0%, while Indiana ranks 39th at 34.2%

Interestingly, in the same month as that brain drain report came out, Wisconsin ranked very well for those who are currently residing in our state.

With high marks for safety and affordability, Wisconsin was listed among the country's best places to live in 2026 in a new report from WalletHub.

The personal finance website ranked states on a 100-point scale that looked at a range of categories: affordability, economy, education, health, quality of life and safety. Overall, Wisconsin ranked third in the nation, with a total score of 59.32.

So what’s going on here? Here’s what Wallethub had to say.

Wisconsin is the third-best state to live in, thanks to its affordable housing market, where the ninth-highest housing affordability helps make homeownership more attainable for residents.

Wisconsin has the 15th-lowest premature death rate in the country and the 16th-lowest share of live birth with low weight. It also has the ninth-highest share of residents with health insurance coverage, at 94.8%.

The Badger State also ranks sixth for the quality of its school systems. It has the best high school graduation rate in the country, too, over 96%. Good-quality education has helped the state’s residents find employment, contributing to the seventh-lowest unemployment rate in the country.

Finally, Wisconsin offers a safe environment for residents, with the sixth-lowest property crime rate in the country and has the 18th-lowest traffic fatality rate in the country.

So we’re consistently above average in a lot of things people want out of a state. And that top-ten ranking for school systems (best in the Midwest) sure goes against Tom Tiffany’s complaints about how education is allegedly failing in this state.

So what’s the disconnect here? One part seems obvious.

If college-educated Wisconsinites are most likely to leave to Minnesota and Illinois and other states that have larger metro areas, that means they are likely getting paid more in those places. And if you look at the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), you’ll find that Illinois and Minnesota consistently pay higher average wages than we do.

I also want to supplement that wage information with a chart that was included in wide-ranging Journal-Sentinel article about admissions to UW-Madison what places its students come from, and where they end up in the years after their graduation.

UW system data on alumni residency shows the majority of in-state students will live in Wisconsin after earning their degree. Three years postgraduation, 87% of in-state students will still live in Wisconsin, while 10 years after graduation 63% will.

When you look at out-of-state alumni living in Wisconsin, that percentage drops to about 11% living in Wisconsin three years after graduation.

Alumni from other UW campuses are more likely to stay in Wisconsin. About 93% of in-state students and 16% of out-of-state students are Wisconsin residents three years postgraduation.

That gap between where in-state students at the flagship school in Madison and the other UWs end up is illuminating to me, because it shows that many Badgers have to go elsewhere to boost their career/life opportunities once they hit their mid-to-late 20s. It is less likely to be the case for graduates of the other UW schools as they advance in their careers, although it also does happen more over time for them as well.

That chart also shows that Wisconsin-based companies aren’t offering enough to out-of-state students to keep them around after graduation, even if they might have better access to recruit those students due to on-campus collaborations and work experiences.

So it seems we need to find a way to encourage more pay and advancement with growing companies here in Wisconsin. Some of this may be through advanced research jobs and opportunities through our colleges and universities (a big reason why the Madison area outpaces the rest of the state), but the private sector needs to be stepping up in this state and competing with larger metro areas for talent.

If they can even offer a salary that is close to what the big towns pay, that may be enough to encourage Wisconsin’s college graduates to stay and raise families in a state that has strong K-12 schools, good affordability (comparatively, anyway), and a high quality of life.