Steve Shupe (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Series: Wisconsin's 21st-Century Workforce

Manufacturing and agriculture have historically reigned supreme in Wisconsin's economy. But automation and consolidation in those sectors, and a shifting emphasis toward service- and technology-based industries, means the nature of work is changing rapidly. As workers across the state seek to start their careers, pursue better jobs, or find themselves struggling to reap the benefits of economic growth, they're looking for new opportunities wherever they might find them, including outside Wisconsin. As demographic and workforce shifts shape the state's future, political and business leaders are looking to attract and retain workers with advanced skills and education. These efforts are related to larger forces affecting Wisconsin's future, including population decline in rural areas, the role of higher education, and how public resources are used to develop the economy.
 
The state of Wisconsin's efforts to attract and retain a younger workforce are coinciding with a growing public reckoning in Madison and surrounding Dane County with the fact that many of its minority residents don't necessarily experience the city as welcoming or inclusive
Madison Common Council president Samba Baldeh and Latino Professionals Association board chair Tania Ibarra discuss diversity in the workplace, examining how the number of diverse voices decreases in positions of increasing authority.
With Wisconsin seeking to attract and retain young talent, do young people want to come or stay? What about people of color? Latino Professionals Association board chair Tania Ibarra and Madison Common Council president Samba Baldeh discuss equity in the workplace.
Wisconsin has made headlines in recent years as a state where entrepreneurship struggles and startup activity lags behind the United States as a whole.
Wisconsin is aging, and as its population of senior citizens grows, the health care workers who attend to them face growing risks of overwork and burnout.
As Wisconsin's unemployment rate stays at record lows, nursing home facilities are struggling to find people to care for its elderly residents.
Economic trends in Wisconsin have recovered considerably a decade since the Great Recession. UW-Madison economics professor Noah Williams discusses what effects are on the workforce, particularly between rural and urban areas.
Wisconsin is running an advertising campaign is to attract new workers from Chicago to move to Wisconsin. Scott Gordon of WisContext discusses how cost-of-living calculations are determined and in what ways they vary between different places.
Cost of living isn't a standardized, hard-and-fast mathematical concept. Looking into how it's defined and applied to specific places reveals less about empirical economic differences and more about the nuanced and fluid ways in which people make decisions about money and opportunity and lifestyle.
Past the shuttered General Motors plant and the Janesville Terrace trailer home park, a facility not seen in the United States in three decades could soon rise: a manufacturing plant that will make a vital radioactive isotope used to detect cancer.