College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

Above ↑ When the U.S. manufacturing sector hurts, Wisconsin — one of the nation’s most manufacturing-dependent states — feels the pain. The Badger state lost 70,000 manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2003.

Building A Competitive Workforce

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Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector has long made us proud. But nowadays, it makes us nervous.

We love to point to the plants that make world-famous motorcycles, hot dogs and beer, toilet paper and outboard motors, electronic and medical gear, fire trucks and sport utility vehicles, and the parts, packaging and tools used to make these and thousands of other products.

But it’s no secret that the U.S. manufacturing sector is struggling, and Wisconsin hasn’t been spared. A lot of jobs vanished in the economic downturn that began in 2000. Wisconsin lost 70,000 manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2003. From 2000 to 2005, manufacturing’s share of all Wisconsin jobs dropped from 21 percent to 18 percent. Some of the jobs have returned, but many are gone for good, lost to overseas competition or rendered obsolete by technological change.

Losing such jobs is particularly painful for Wisconsin, points out
Gary Green, an Extension community development specialist in the College’s rural sociology department.

“Historically, Wisconsin has had the second or third highest percentage of manufacturing jobs in the nation,” he points out.

By the same token, some parts of the state have felt more pain than others.

“St. Croix County is one of the most manufacturing-dependent counties in a manufacturing-dependent state,” points out Jim Janke, the county’s Extension community economics development agent. “When the downturn came in 2001, we went from less than 2 percent unemployment to above the state average because we’d lost so many manufacturing jobs.”

Losing jobs in any sector hurts the state, but it’s particularly painful to lose manufacturing jobs because they’ve provided relatively good wages and benefits, Green says.

While Wisconsin’s employment picture is far from bleak, the loss of these jobs underscores the importance of efforts to encourage the growth of firms that can create new jobs of similar quality, he adds.

It takes workers to create jobs

One thing that makes employers hesitate to create new jobs in a community is uncertainty about whether the community has the workers to fill those jobs. Expansion-minded firms are hungry for information about local labor markets — the size of the workforce, the supply and demand for specific skills, and the prevailing wages.

State and federal agencies don’t collect this kind of detailed, localized data, so the task falls to the communities themselves — specifically, to community economic development specialists employed by nonprofit development corporations, local governments and UW-Extension.

It’s not a simple job, but it’s doable, thanks to a labor force analysis protocol developed by Green.

Green works with local Extension agents to provide the community with templates for surveys that measure key factors related to labor supply and demand. One survey targets area households to learn the size and skills of the local workforce. Another asks local employers about jobs available or anticipated and prevailing wage rates. Other surveys query current workers in local firms and students poised to enter the workforce.

Once the surveys are completed, Green helps analyze the data and interpret the results.
The idea got an early tryout in Burnett County in 1993. John Preissing, then the county’s Extension community development agent, helped the Burnett County Development Association conduct a pair of surveys, one of 298 area workers, another of local businesses. Preissing then worked with Green to analyze the results.

The resulting Labor Force Profile was a potent weapon when a plastic injection-molding firm in Minnesota was looking to expand.

“We had the information compiled and ready for them,” Preissing recalls. “They reviewed it and within two weeks had opened their new plant in an existing building in Grantsburg.”
The firm’s president made it clear that having data showing that there were enough workers to fill the jobs, and accurate information about local wage rates, were key factors in the decision to locate in Grantsburg.

Since then, Green has had ample opportunity to test and refine his system. It’s been used in 45 Wisconsin counties, many of which have done multiple surveys.

Barron County completed its fifth labor force analysis in 2005. About four dozen people were present when Green presented the results at a breakfast meeting in Rice Lake. They included human resource managers, local government officials, bankers, economic development specialists, and educators from local schools, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College, and UW-Barron County.

Having current local workforce data has been very helpful in targeting business recruiting efforts, says Dallas Sloan, operations director for the Barron Electric Cooperative and past president of the Barron County Economic Development Corporation.

“If we have a lot of people with certain technical skills, we can target a company that needs those skills. We can go to the company and say, ‘Look, we have the kind of workforce you need. If you come here, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel,’” he says.

Gaps in the workforce

It’s nice when the surveys show that the skills available in a community dovetail perfectly with what a firm is looking for. It’s also rare. More typically, surveys show that a community’s workforce needs some retooling.

“At the time we were doing our survey, there was a labor shortage in the area — particularly of welders,” recalls Dave Neuendorf, Extension community development agent in Dodge County. “Some employers were working to get the Moraine Park Technical College to offer welding classes in Beaver Dam.” The survey documented the shortage of welders and helped the employers make their case.

Sometimes the skills that are lacking have less to do with technical expertise than with attitude and character. A Lincoln County survey found that employers were concerned with punctuality and attendance. Asked to rate the employee characteristics they most wanted to see, “soft skills” topped the list.

“Integrity and honesty tied for number one,” says Art Lersch, the county’s UW-Extension community development agent. “Listening skills came in third.” Computer skills came in last, rated as important by only 25 percent of the firms surveyed, Lersch adds.

“Although these firms would like employees with good math, reading and speaking skills, they’re more interested in people who come to work on time, show up on a regular basis, work in teams and take instruction.”

When skills don’t match jobs

Community leaders cannot afford to ignore a mismatch between jobs and skills, Green says.

“There’s often an assumption that the mismatch between jobs and workers will work itself out naturally, ” he says. “But a lot of it won’t resolve itself. It takes some level of decision making.”

Having good, local workforce data makes that decision-making a lot easier, points out Dick Best, executive director of Workforce Resources, Inc., a nonprofit agency that works on employment issues in nine west-central Wisconsin counties.“We can transfer what we learn from the employer surveys to people seeking employment and to educational institutions so they can focus training on high-demand areas,” says Best.

“When you put this together with a household survey, you get a sense of what skills are out there and what wages would attract workers. You learn about assets and deficiencies in the labor market. You see both sides of the equation and how closely they’re attuned. You see what adjustments job seekers will have to make to match up with demand.

“Many business relocations and expansions are based heavily on skills that are available in the workforce,” Best adds. “Areas that are more on top of their labor market and have access to good data are going to be more competitive. The survey data we are able to access in partnership with Gary Green and UW-Extension gives us an added edge in the competition for good jobs.”