- In our first look tonight, Wisconsin wants to blitz the
nation with a marketing campaign to persuade people
to come here to work.
Governor Scott Walker says it's critical to,
"get more bodies" in Wisconsin, saying the state projects
the need for 45,000 workers in seven years to fill jobs
in manufacturing, nursing,
information technology and services.
The governor is calling on the legislature to approve
$6.8 million for the marketing, but with Foxconn coming,
a separate million dollar campaign to lure young
professionals in Chicago to Wisconsin kicks off in January.
- "Your ramen or ours?"
In Milwaukee, the cost of living is 22% less than in Chicago.
- The "Your ramen or ours?" spot
is one of the many marketing messages across platforms,
including even a Chicago commuter train wrap,
espousing the benefits of moving to Wisconsin
from the windy city.
The target?
Young professionals, including those who graduated from
Wisconsin colleges.
- We'll be putting ads in places where millennials tend to
frequent, commuter trains, and the train stations themselves.
Inn health clubs that they might be exercising in and bars,
restaurants, et cetera that they spend time in.
- Because the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation
is talent spotting to fill existing and future jobs.
- Wisconsin just doesn't do as good a job attracting workers
into the state as some of our other states around the country.
- UW Economist Tessa Conroy says it's likely to be an uphill
battle because workers aren't as mobile as they were even a
decade ago.
Plus, Wisconsin competes for millennials with states that
have larger cities with a special pull.
- Workers like thick labor markets.
That's why they go to Minneapolis
and St. Paul and Chicago.
And comparatively, Wisconsin doesn't have an urban center
quite like that that has that kind of
gravitational effect on workers.
- Millennials, Conroy says,
like what are called high amenities.
- I think a lot of millennials just want to go where
opportunities are like, where the cities are,
like music - not looking for development and activities do to
that are just not basic like a walk in the park - like
concerts, sporting events.
- In a quick survey of 20-somethings on campus in
Madison, we asked, do you want to stay in Wisconsin after
getting your degree?
- I'd prefer to leave, to be brutally honest,
but it really depends on where I'm able to get a job.
I'd prefer to go back either to DC or LA
or somewhere like that.
- A lot of people want to go to Chicago.
Not a lot of people are sticking around.
- But it turns out, most in-state students do want to
stay and work in Wisconsin, at least eventually.
- I want to start out my career in a big city.
Get the feel of a different kind of lifestyle and see more things
than Wisconsin has an offer.
I mean, but I want to come back for sure.
It's always been my home.
- Did you know that almost 80% of in-state students live and
work in Wisconsin in the years after graduation?
UW-Madison, working for Wisconsin.
- And UW System schools report 87% of their grads
stay in Wisconsin.
The problem is not as much how many people leave as how few
people come.
- I wouldn't say it's the case that people are leaving the
state at unusually high rates compared to other states
in the U.S.
It's really the in-migration that seems to be
one of the potential weaknesses in the state.
That our in-migration just isn't enough to offset
the average rates of out-migration we do have.
- That's why the first marketing blitz goes after
out-of-state graduates.
- Individuals and students that have gone to one of our
universities already have experienced the state.
They have a feeling of connection with them.
Reaching out to the alumni populations across the country,
across the world essentially and using and leveraging the
networks that they already have in place to tell this story
seems like an obvious way to go.
- Governor Scott Walker wants to add to the "Come Work in
Wisconsin" advertising budget, seeking nearly $7 million for
targeted campaigns, including trying to attract military
veterans to the state.
- Veterans are a really important part of the workforce
and as they're needing talent now,
folks transitioning out of the military come with a set of
skills that typically are very aligned with our industries and
the job opportunities that companies are looking
to fill here in the state.
- But what about the question of whether the demand for
workers in short supply could command higher wages to possibly
incentivize a move into the state?
- I think a lot of the story in Wisconsin is that we're raising
wages and we still can't find workers.
I think that might be the case, but maybe what's going on here
is that we have been increasing but they're still low compared
to jobs in another sector or jobs in another city.
- So as to that question of wages in Wisconsin and other
matters relating to the short supply of workers,
we turned to workforce policy specialists at Wisconsin
Manufacturers and Commerce Chris reader.
Thanks for being here. - Thanks for having me.
- What about that question that Tessa Conroy,
the economist brings up in our story about low wages compared
to jobs in other sectors and other cities?
Is it our leading sector of manufacturing that's not able to
keep pace with higher-paying sectors?
- No.
I think manufacturing consistently is a high-pay
industry in Wisconsin.
It's one of the top states for manufacturing in country.
If you take a look at wages over the past several years,
Wisconsin has been very strong on wage growth.
I think we've been 11th in the nation since 2010
in terms of wage growth.
Kind of the situation that we have now where we have a
workforce or worker shortage, which we're all trying to
address, really should continue to put upward pressure on wages
and benefit packages as manufacturers,
health care and other industries try to draw talent not only from
other sources within Wisconsin, but from other areas
to come to Wisconsin.
- There has been upward pressure already on wages,
but is it accurate that maybe we aren't competing well with other
cities or other states?
- No, I think we do compete.
I think when you take a look at Wisconsin and you take a look
at our cost of living here, we have a very low cost of living
compared to Chicago or compared to some other communities
throughout the country.
So when you take our cost of living and you take our wages,
we really have a great story to tell.
I think we have a place that workers,
if they do all that calculation,
should want to come to Wisconsin.
- What's the extent of the worker shortage in Wisconsin?
- For our members, it's something
that is very top of mind.
We do a survey of our CEO members every six months.
We're just getting that data in now for the December survey.
And it's very high.
It's 80% of our members are saying that they are having a
hard time right now finding workers that they need.
That's up from 77% last year and up from only about 50% a few
years back.
So it's top of mind. It's growing.
Four out of five employers cannot
find the talent they need right now.
- Is this in any particular sector or across the board?
- It's all over.
It's across the board.
It's health care, manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, I.T.
It's really all types of jobs.
It's somebody to work on the factory floor.
It's also somebody in management.
It's cross-sector and cross-job.
- Why is this happening?
- Well, if you take a look at the plain demographics,
we have in Wisconsin a birth rate that is slightly below the
national average, a little bit below.
We have a situation that was accurately displayed in the
story of people for most part staying in Wisconsin if they go
to UW school or a private college here in the state.
They stay here.
But we're not drawing people to Wisconsin.
And other states are drawing people from other states to
their area.
So we have kind of a stagnant population.
We have a population of baby boomers
that are exiting the workforce.
So we have a vacuum being created without a new sector--
section of workers coming into it.
-What's the result for employers of this worker shortage?
- Sure.
Well, if we can't get workers to come here,
which is why it's so important that this campaign
that the governor is kicking off now works.
If we don't get workers to come here and families to move here,
we're looking at economic stagnation.
In order to keep our economy moving forward in the decades
to come, we really need to solve this issue now and get people
to move here in order so that we can fill our jobs going forward.
- There was discussion in the story about how young
professionals like these "thick" labor market with these high
amenities and not mentioned in the story but mentioned by the
economist, things like really robust mass transit systems.
Is there any way that Wisconsin with its largest city Milwaukee
can really compete with those "thick" labor markets?
- Absolutely.
We actually just this week unveiled a different video.
You can see it a wmc.org.
It's a video where we interviewed a couple from
Janesville that used to live in Chicago.
They moved to Wisconsin, to Janesville,
out of Chicago because they saw the cost of living in Wisconsin.
They say the life quality in Wisconsin as something,
once they were in their careers for a few years, having kids,
they wanted to move back to Wisconsin.
They were originally from Wisconsin.
So they've moved back to Janesville.
Absolutely, if you stack our quality of life up with big
cities, we can compete I believe with anyone in the country.
And Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine,
they do have a lot of great amenities for folks that want to
come and have that purely urban life
living downtown in a high-rise.
We do have that.
It's maybe not as played up as much as it should be in
Milwaukee, but we have a great quality of life in the city of
Milwaukee for folks that want that downtown lifestyle.
- Are all eggs kind are in this marketing outreach campaign?
- Yeah.
This is where it's at right now in terms of what we need to do
as a state to continue to prosper and grow.
Again, from our members, four out of five are having a
difficult time right now finding the workers that they need.
It's across sector.
So it's something we really need to get right.
We need to make sure our K-12 system continues to produce
education results that let our kids get into jobs Wisconsin
will have.
We need to make sure that people in higher ed in Wisconsin
want to stay here after they finish their degree.
And we need to bring folks in
in order to meet the coming numbers crunch.
- Chris Reader, thanks very much.
- Thanks for having me.