FOX VALLEY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — As 2022 comes to a close, the state is looking back on a record year for total number of people employed, just as employers in Northeast Wisconsin are hoping to keep that talent.
Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate dropped in November, but it was still 2.8 percentage points higher than the national rate of 62.1%.
Although, staffing challenges continue to impact area businesses and companies.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the state added 6,500 non-farm and 5,800 private sector jobs in November.
Over the whole year, 63,000 jobs have been added in the state.
“The year 2022 was pretty good for Wisconsin,” said DWD chief economist, Dennis Winters. “We set the low for unemployment rate at 2.8%. It’s a little above that right now.”
Despite low numbers, many employers in the state have been dealing with a worker shortage.
“There’s what we call a quantity challenge on the workforce,” said Winters.
Winters says it’s something they’ve known about for 20 years.
“It’s finally kind of coming to the floor,” said Winters. “But businesses are having trouble attracting talent, and it’s mostly because we just don’t have enough bodies to go around.”
Another reason being a generation gap.
“The baby boomers are retiring, so you have a significant amount of talent that’s exiting the workforce and moving into that retirement peace,” said Melissa Olsen, shareholder in charge of human resources at KerberRose in Appleton.
Olsen says that five years ago, the labor market had an active candidate pool. Now, it’s shifted to a passive candidate pool.
“These historically low unemployment rates, job seekers aren’t trolling the job words, they’re not active, the traffic is significantly reduced,” said Olsen. “So, when you have a passive candidate pool, it takes a lot more thoughtful, strategic effort to find those candidates.”
“As everybody knows, the workforce issues in healthcare have been very challenging,” said ThedaCare president and CEO Dr. Irman Andrabi. “Not only for ThedaCare but all health systems across the country.”
The third largest healthcare employer in Wisconsin is Thedacare. It’s also the largest employer in Northeast Wisconsin with over 7,000 team members.
Dr. Andrabi says they still have those challenges but are slowly getting better.
“We have hired approximately 1,300 people in this past year,” said Andrabi.
He says ThedaCare is working from both a recruitment and a retention perspective when hiring now and in the new year.
“Including retraining our existing staff through our partnerships with Fox Valley Tech or UWO and many other colleges and universities,” said Andrabi.
