Wisconsin will face a shortage of skilled employees in critical fields even as the number of unemployed residents grows, a new report says. The study by UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy says aging adults will be retiring from their jobs and there won’t be enough skilled workers to succeed them.
The report says Wisconsin had an average of 144,000 unemployed residents in 2005 and only 3,300 of them were getting training through the Work Force Investment Act.
The COWS study recommends increasing access to education and training, especially for low-income adults, and adopting policies to index the minimum wage and to put job quality at the top of the agenda for the state.