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Healthcare Industry Now Largest Employer in WI
Wisconsin’s economy is undergoing a change, and one of the state’s largest business groups says it may not be a good change.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Counties Association said healthcare has now replaced manufacturing as Wisconsin’s largest employer.
“The healthcare and social assistance sector has overtaken manufacturing as Wisconsin’s largest employer by a margin of 4,933 jobs,” the report states.
Kurt Bauer with Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce said during an interview on News Talk 1130 WISN that manufacturing remains the state’s most valuable employer, but manufacturing has lost thousands of jobs over the past 20 years.
“[Manufacturing] is still dominant, with $74 billion per-year, compared to $47 billion per-year for healthcare. We are still a manufacturing state,” Bauer said.
The report explained that the growth in Wisconsin’s healthcare workforce is largely in “social assistance,” as opposed to doctors and nurses. The report adds that many of those new healthcare jobs pay far less than manufacturing jobs.
"Manufacturing remains a vital part of Wisconsin’s economy [with] nearly 460,000 workers, average pay of $75,115," the report's authors wrote. "Social assistance, the sector’s lowest paid subsector [pays] roughly $30,000 annually."
Bauer said that is not a good trade for Wisconsin.
“The bottom line is: This is a demographic problem, and we have to address it,” Bauer said.
Bauer said there are simply too few young people going into manufacturing and the trades. He said that lack of workers has companies in Wisconsin looking at either more automation, or to move to other states.
“As we can’t find workers, a lot of manufacturers are adopting automation, robotics, and things powered by AI,” Bauer explained.
He said the solution is to start exposing high schoolers to manufacturing jobs and the trades.
“Our technical colleges…have stepped-up,” Bauer said. “The problem is that we’ve got to get more kids gravitating toward manufacturing jobs. They need to be exposed to what manufacturing looks like in 2026.”
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